LOW VOLTAGE DETECTING CIRCUIT

摘要

A low voltage detecting circuit is provided to simply replace a half-reference voltage generator by using a bit line voltage or a plate voltage as a half-reference voltage in a DRAM(Dynamic RAM). A low voltage detecting circuit includes a half-reference voltage generator and a low voltage detection signal generator. The half-reference voltage generator generates a half-reference voltage, which is a half of a source voltage. The low voltage detection signal generator receives the half-reference voltage as a reference input and generates a low voltage detection signal, when the magnitude of the source voltage is smaller than a predetermined level. The low voltage detection signal generator includes a pull down element(330), a low voltage detector(310), and an inverter(350). One end of the pull down element is grounded while the other end is connected to a contact point. The low voltage detector receives the half-reference voltage and is connected to the source voltage and the contact point. The low voltage detector is deactivated when the magnitude of the source voltage is smaller than the predetermined level. The inverter inverts the voltage level of the contact point and outputs the result as the low voltage detection signal.