LCMOS: Light-powered standard CMOS circuits

LCMOS, a harvest-use light-powered scheme for standard CMOS circuits based on photogenerated currents in the drain-substrate PN junction of both PMOS and NMOS transistors is introduced. PMOS and NMOS bulks are ground-connected so the generated currents induce symmetrical positive and negative voltage at the PMOS and NMOS sources, respectively. Applying this approach to a CMOS inverter ring oscillator in 150 nm technology, simulations show that nearly 1 Vpp signal range can be obtained. The operation of a simple 4-bit counter is also illustrated. The light-powering technique can be applied almost directly to digital standard cells in ultra-low-power applications with modest processing speed requirements.