An 80-117V Pseudo-Adiabatic Drive Circuit for Microrobotic Actuators with Optical Power Delivery and Peak Power Reduction Factor over 14×

Abstract

This work presents an efficient high-voltage drive circuit for mm-scale electrostatic and piezoelectric microrobotic transducers. A reconfigurable series-parallel switched-capacitor (SC) DC-DC converter interfaces between either on-chip photovoltaic cells or a single off-chip battery, and a high-voltage MEMs actuator. The SC converter boosts a nominal -5-7.4V input by -16× to 80-117V. By charging the output sequentially and recovering charge in discharge cycles, the converter reduces power consumption by over 14×, compared to a conventional hard-switching driver. Measured results show effective operation with loads up to 20nF and operating frequency over 50kHz.