A 1-μA-Quiescent-Current Capacitor-Less LDO Regulator with Adaptive Embedded Slew-Rate Enhancement Circuit

A low-power and fast-transient capacitor-less low dropout regulator (CL-LDO) has been proposed in this paper. A class-AB amplifier with adaptive embedded slew-rate enhancement (SRE) circuit is employed to improve both the transient response performance and load current range. The proposed CL- LDO has been implemented in a 55-nm standard CMOS process and occupies an active chip area of 0.012 mm
²
. It is capable of delivering 0-10 mA load current and recovering within 0.075 ps under maximum load current change with 1.3 V supply voltage and 0.1 V dropout, while consuming only 1-pA quiescent current, demonstrating its potential capability to be applied in low power duty-cycling wireless sensor applications.