Leakage current reduction in CMOS logic circuits

A novel logic gate design with low leakage is proposed. Traditionally, the subthreshold leakage through a logic gate depends on the applied input vector. In order to reduce leakage power, we stack an extra transistor in the large leakage path. The proposed structure induces low leakage current under all possible inputs. Compared to the conventional CMOS logic circuit design, the simulation results show that the proposed logic circuits not only reduce significant leakage power dissipation, but also keep similar circuit performance as conventional CMOS logic circuits.