Applications
- A common application for charge pump circuits is in RS-232 level shifters where they are used to derive positive and negative voltages (often +10 V and −10 V) from a single 5 V or 3 V power supply rail.
- Charge pumps can also be used as LCD or white LED drivers, generating high bias voltages from a single low-voltage supply, such as a battery.
- A charge pump providing a negative voltage spike has been used in NES-compatible games not licensed by Nintendo in order to stun the Nintendo Entertainment System lockout chip.
- As of 2007, charge pumps are integrated into nearly all EEPROM and flash memory integrated circuits. These devices require a high voltage pulse to "clean out" any existing data in a particular memory cell before it can be written with a new value. Early EEPROM and flash memory devices required two power supplies: +5V (for reading) and +12 V (for erasing). As of 2007, commercially available flash memory and EEPROM memory requires only one external power supply – generally 1.8 or 3.3V. A higher voltage, used to erase cells, is generated internally by an on-chip charge pump. However, some researchers say that a solid-state drive using a single large boost converter will cost less and use 33 percent less power than current SSDs which use a charge pump on every flash chip.
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