SUMMARYAn improved active‐diode circuit, which makes use of positive feedback to achieve fast on/off transition, is presented in this paper. The proposed active‐diode circuit can be embedded into a voltage doubler to replace the commonly used dead‐time circuit and to eliminate reverse current. In addition, the relationship between oscillation frequency, boosting and output capacitances, load‐ and on‐resistances of the power switch and the output voltage is analysed, to investigate a methodology to retain high voltage gain of a voltage doubler. The proposed active‐diode circuit is applied to a voltage doubler implemented in a commercial 0.35‐µm process with threshold voltage of about 0.68 V. The input voltage, maximum output current and oscillation frequency of the voltage doubler are 1 V, 1 mA and 0.4 MHz, respectively. Moreover, the used boosting and output capacitances are 22 nF. The highest power efficiency achieved is 83% at a load current of 0.47 mA. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.