A high voltage-high frequency SOS/CMOS pulse generator

A high voltage, high frequency CMOS pulse generator circuit for high voltage driver applications is proposec and its excellent performance is verified experimentally using an integrated circuit on an SOS (Silicon On Sapphire) wafer. The circuit basically consists of a high voltage CMO5 inverter with a "gate coupling capacitor," between the driver and the load transistor gates. Since the driver gate signal is fed to the load gatethrough the capacitors the inverter can operate at a Iow TTL-level input voltage and produce higher voltage, higher frequency pulses with lower power dissipation than conventional bipolar circuits. The whole circuit was integrated on an SOS wafer, using high voltage offset-gate SOS/MOS technology, with the capacitor externalized. The pulse generator ICs successfully produced 150 V, 5 MHz high Voltage pulses without loading and drove 280 discharge cells (0.25 mm²/ cell) of an AC refresh-type Plasma Display Panel (PDP) at 2 MHz. Even higher Voltage pulses of 500 V, 250 kHz repetition rate were obtained using longer offset-gate transistors.