High Voltage Tolerant Level Shifters and DCVSL in Standard Low Voltage CMOS Technologies

In this paper, high voltage (HV) tolerant level-shifters with combinational functionality are proposed based on Differential Cascode Voltage Switch Logic (DCVSL). These level-shifters are tolerant to supply voltages higher than the process limit for individual CMOS transistors. The proposed HV DCVSL level shifters are particularly useful when it is mandatory to ensure a specific behavior during out of the normal mode periods (power up; power down; reset; etc.). These high voltage tolerant logic circuits were used in the power block of buck converter designed in a standard 3.3V, 0.13μm CMOS process, powered by an input voltage range from 2.7V to 4.2V.