A novel charge pump, Capacitance Varying Charge Pump (CVCP) is proposed. This charge pump is composed of variable capacitors and rectifiers, and the charge transfer is attained by changing the capacitance values in a manner similar to peristaltic pumps. The analysis of multi-stage CVCP reveals that the output voltage is exponentially dependent on the stage number. Thus, compared with the Dickson charge pump, this charge pump has an advantage in generating high voltages with small stages. As a practical example of CVCP, we present an implementation realized by a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) technology. Here, the variable capacitor is enabled by a comb-capacitor attached to a high-quality factor resonator. As the rectifier, a PN-junction diode formed in the MEMS layer is used. Simulations including the mechanical elements are carried out for this MEMS version of CVCP. The simulation results on the output voltage and load characteristics are shown to coincide well with the theoretical estimations. The MEMS CVCP is suited for MEMS devices and vibration energy harvesters.

In this paper, a novel trench MOS barrier Schottky contact super barrier rectifier (TMB-SSBR) is proposed by combining the advantages of vertical SSBR and conventional TMBS. The operation mechanism and simulation verification are presented. TMB-SSBR consists of MOS trenches with a vertical SSBR grid which replaces the Schottky diode in the mesa of a TMBS. Due to the presence of top p-n junction in the proposed TMB-SSBR, the image force barrier lowering effect is eliminated, the pinching off electric field effect by MOS trenches is weakened, so that the mesa surface electric field is much larger than that in conventional TMBS. Therefore, the mesa width is enlarged and the n-drift concentration is slightly increased, which results in a low specific on-resistance and a good tradeoff between reverse leakage currents and forward voltages. Compared to a conventional TMBS, simulation results show that, with the same breakdown voltage of 124V and the same reverse leakage current at room temperature, TMB-SSBR increases the figure of merit (FOM, equates to V_B²/R_{on, sp}) by 25.5%, and decreases the reverse leakage by 33.3% at the temperature of 423K. Just like the development from SBD to TMBS, from TMBS to TMB-SSBR also brings obvious improvement of performance.

Thermoelectric effect of Ga-Sn-O (GTO) thin films has been investigated for Internet-of-Things application. It is found that the amorphous GTO thin films provide higher power factors (PF) than the polycrystalline ones, which is because grain boundaries block the electron conduction in the polycrystalline ones. It is also found that the GTO thin films annealed in vacuum provide higher PF than those annealed in air, which is because oxygen vacancies are terminated in those annealed in air. The PF and dimensionless figure of merit (ZT) is not so excellent, but the cost effectiveness is excellent, which is the most important for some examples of the Internet-of-Things application.