CMOS Integrated Electro-magnetic Force Actuator

Minimizing the power consumed by transistors in numerous applications has been widely studied. This paper describes a digital approach to adjusting the output power of an RF circuit using 0.5 mum digital CMOS technology. A programmable power amplifier consists of an array of parallel NMOS transistors hooked up to an (all-on-chip) class E Power Amplifier (PA), and it functions as a direct digital to RF amplitude converter and filter. The results show that the maximum output power achieved is 8 dBm using a 3 V power supply and occupying 0.18 mum². These programmable power sources can drive an on-chip small inductor so as to use it as an electromagnetic force generator. Several on these on-chip force generators can be used to drive a tiny probe, endowed with a similar generators, in imaging or manipulation applications in nano-technology-particularly atomic force microscopy (AFM).