A 0.35μm CMOS sub-1V low-quiescent-current low-dropout regulator

Abstract

A sub-1 V CMOS low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulator with 103 nA low-quiescent current is presented in this paper. The proposed LDO uses a digital error amplifier that can make the quiescent current lower than other LDOs with the traditional error amplifier. Besides, the LDO can be stable even without the output capacitor. With a 0.9 V power supply, the output voltage is designed as 0.5 V. The maximum output current of the LDO is 50 mA at an output of 0.5 V. The prototype of the LDO is fabricated with TSMC 0.35 mum CMOS processes. The active area without pads is only 240 mum times 400 mum.