IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUIT THEORY CT-12, 4

VOL. NO. DECEMBER 1965

Some Circuit Design Techniques for

Linear Integrated Circuits
R. J. WIDLAR

Abstract-This paper describes some novel circuit design tech- BIASING CIRCUITS
niques for linear integrated circuits. These techniques make use of
elements which can be constructed easily in monolithic form to avoid One of the most basic problems encountered in inte-
processing dilEculties or substantial yield losses in manufacturing. grated circuits is bias stabilization of a common emitter
Methods are shown which eliminate the need for the wide variety of amplifier. Conventional methods [l] usually require sub-
components and tight component tolerances usually required with stantial dc degeneration and a bypass capacitor to reduce
discrete designs, which substitute parts which can be made simply,
and which make use of special characteristics obtainable with mono-
th.e degeneration at the frequencies to be amplified. With
lithic construction. integrated circuits, the required bypass capacitors are
much too large to be practical. In the past, this problem
has been overcome using some sort of differential [2]
or emitter-coupled [3] amplifier connection. These solu-
HE COMPONENTS available in integrated circuit tions have been adequate in many instances, but they
processes which are in production today are limited suffer from a lack of versatility.
T
both in type and in range of values. This limitation The close matching of components and tight thermal
has been more troublesome with linear circuits than with coupling obtained i.n integrated circuits permit much
digital, since many more different kinds of parts are used more radical solutions. An example is given in Fig. l(a).
with conventional designs. Therefore, serious problems A current source ca,n be implemented by imposing the
have arisen in adapting discrete-component designs to ernitter-base voltage. of a diode-connected transistor op-
monolithic construction. erating at one collector current across the emitter-base
In many cases an attempt has been made to develop junction of a second transistor. If the two transistors are
new technology in order to integrate existing designs. This identical, their collector currents will be equal; hence, the
approach has met with varying degrees of success, but operating current of the current source can be deter-
has generally resulted in circuits which are difficult to mined from the resistor (R,) and the supply voltage (V).
produce in large volume. To realize a practical micro- Experiment has shown that this biasing scheme is stable
circuit with any certainty and within a reasonable period over a wide temperature range, giving collector current
of time, it becomes necessary to use existing production matches between the biasing and operating devices typ-
technology. Fortunately, with some specialized circuit ically better than five percent, even for power dissipa-
design techniques, it is possible in certain cases to achieve ti,ons in QZ above 100 mW.
performance with present technology which is equal to An extension of this idea is shown in Fig. l(b). A
or better than that obtainable with discrete-component transformer with a low resistance secondary can be in-
circuits. These techniques make it possible to avoid the serted between the biasing transistor (Q1) and the second
restrictions imposed by limited types of components, transistor (Q2). Then QZ is stably biased as an amplifier
poor tolerances, and restricted range of component values. without requiring any bypass elements, and the trans-
They make use of the inherent advantages of integrated former secondary is coupled to the amplifier without
circuits: close matching of active and passive devices disturbing the bias conditions.
over a wide temperature range, excellent thermal coupling A third and more subtle variation is given in Fig. l(c).
throughout the circuit, the economy of using a large If R, and R, as well as Q1 and Q2 are identical, the collector
number of active devices, the freedom of selection of currents of the two transistors will be equal, since their
active device geometries, and the availability of devices bases are driven from a common voltage point through
which have no exact discrete-element counterpart. equal resistances. The collector current of Q1 will be
Some of these techniques will be discussed; an attempt given by
will be made to indicate in a broad sense what can be I _ 1 - Vm
done rather than going into great detail on particulars. Cl - - 2+3, 0)
Rl ( 1>
Examples of practical circuits will be given to illustrate
where a single V,, and I, term is used since both tran-
important points.
sistors are identical. For VBE << V and I, << I,,

Manuscript received March 8, 1965:, revised July 19, 1965. I,, = I,, s $+. (2)
The author is with Fairchild Semiconductor, Mountain View, I
Calif. If Rz = $R,, then

586
1965 WIDLAR: LINEAR INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 587

~lfGNO $g-+ ooND R3&q;D

Ein Ein
(a> (b) Cc)
Fig. 1. Biasing techniques applicable to integrated circuitr; which
take advantage of precise matching and close thermal coupling.
(a) Current source. (b) Transformer coupled amplifier. (c) RC-
coupled amplifier.

R3
10K

Fig. 2. General purpose wideband amplifier

using balanced biasing techniques.

CONSTANT CURRENTSOURCE
E, g $+ (3)
The formation of current sources in the microampere
current range can be difficult with integrated circuits
which means that the amplifier will be biased at its because of the relatively large resistance values usually
optimum operating point, at one half the supply voltage, required. A circuit is shown in Fig. 3 which makes possible
independent of the supply voltage as well as temperature a current source with outputs in the tens of microamperes
and dependent only on how well the parts within the using resistances of only a few kilohms. It makes use of
integrated circuit match. the predictable difference of the emitter-base voltage
An evaluation of the effects of mismatch on bias of two transistors operating at different collector currents.
stability is given in the Appendix. Its operation can be described as follows: the collector
A simple amplifier using the biasing of Fig. l(c) is current of a transistor is given as a function of emitter-
illustrated in Fig. 2. An emitter degeneration resistor base voltage by
(RB) is employed in conjunction with R, to control gain
and raise input impedance without disturbing the balanced I, = I, exp. 9,
( >
biasing. A cascade connection of Qz with Q3 reduces
input capacitance while the emitter follower (QJ gives where Is is the so-called saturation current, q is the charge
a low output impedance. of an electron, k is Boltzmanns constant and T is the
It can be seen from the foregoing that the matching absolute temperature. This expression holds up to high
characteristics of a monolithic circuit have made possible currents where emitter contact and base spreading re-
biasing methods which are superior to those practically sistances become important and down to low currents
attainable with discrete designs. Excellent biasing sta- where collector leakage currents cause inaccuracy. It
bility is achieved over a wide temperature range without has been shown to be valid, within a percent or so, for
wasting any of the supply voltage across bias stabilization operation over at least six decades of collector current
networks. In addition, no bypass capacitors are required. with well-made silicon transistors [7]-[9]. This contrasts
The use of a circuit similar to that in Fig. l(c) as the with similar expressions for diode current and the emitter
second stage of differential input, single-ended output current of transistors which show substantial error over
amplifiers is described in [4]-[6]. three decades of current operation.
588 IEEE TRANSACTIONSON CIRCUIT THEORY DECEMBER

mined in that they both subtract directly from I,,,

and I,, subtracts from I,,.
One interesting feature of this circuit is that for V >>
vBB and lo >> lo the output current will vary roughly
as the logarithm of the supply voltage (V). Therefore,
if the current source is used iti such an application as the
input stage of an operational amplifier, the operating
collector current and voltage gain of the input stage
will vary little over an extremely wide range of supply
Fig. 3. A current source for generating very small currents using voltages.
moderate value resistors. From (8) it can be seen that the emitter-base voltage
differential is a linear function of absolute temperature.
Therefore, it might be expected that the output current
Solving (4) for VBE gives
of the current source would vary in a similar manner.
Such is the case, as illustrated in Fig. 3. The plot is for
V BE = y log, 9. IO r 5OI,, with both zero temperature coefficient re-
s sistors and high-resistivity diffused resistors (bulk im-
This expression can be used to find the emitter-base purity concentration less than 1017 atoms/cm3). It is
voltage difference between two transistors: notable that diffused resistors provide overcompensation
for this characteristic.
AV,, = V-BE, - Vm
PINCH RESISTORS
= y log, p _ y log, F
s1 S? A potentially useful element in integrated circuits
which has received much mention but little actual ap-
= ~1,,.~+~1,,+. (6) plication is the pinch resistor [lo]. It is an ordinary diffused
c2 s1
(base) resistor, the cross-sectional area of which has been
For equal collector currents, this becomes effectively reduced by making an emitter diffusion on top
of it [see Fig. 4(a)]. The emitter diffusion raises the sheet
AV,, = resistivity from the usual 100 or 200 D/sq to 10 Ka/sq
or higher. This permits rather large resistors to be made
Considerable testing has shown that for adjacent, iden- in a relatively small area. The pinch resistor, however,
tical integrated circuit transistors this term is typically has several limiting characteristics. As can be seen from
less than 0.5 mV. It is also relatively independent of the Fig. 4(b), it is linear only for small voltage drops and
current level, as might be expected since Is should be a it has a low breakdown voltage (5 to 10 volts). Neither
constant. Hence, the emitter-base voltage differential be- t:he linear nor the nonlinear portions of the characteristics
tween adjacent integrated circuit transistors operating can be controlled well and the resistance at the origin
at different collector currents is given by can easily vary over a 4-to-1 range in a normal produc-
tiion situation. In addition, the resistor has a very strong
AV DE = positive temperature coefficient, changing by about 3 to 1
over the -55C to f125C temperature range.
within a fraction of a millivolt. On the other hand, there is a strong correlation between
With the circuit in Fig. 3, a collector current which t:he pinch resistor values and transistor current gains
is large by comparison to the desired current-source obtained in manufacture. Within a given process, the
current is passed through the diode-connected baising s:heet resitivity is roughly proportional to the current
transistor Q1. Its emitter-base voltage is used to bias gains near the current-gain peak (where surface effects
the current-source transistor Q2. If the base currents of have little influence on the current gain). Further, the
the transistors are neglected for simplicity, the resistance resistors tend to track with the current gains over tem-
required to determine the current-source current is given perature. The matching of identical pinch resistors is
by also nearly as good as base resistors and substantially
better than transistor current gains, since the current
R, zz p
c2
(9) gains are affected by unpredictable surface phenomena
whereas the pinch resistors are not,.
Or, for t,he circuit in Fig. 3, Figure 2 provides an example of where pinch resistors
c.sn be used effectively. Both R3 and R, have small
R, = -$og, [v+R;,pE]. voltage drops across them, and it would be advantageous
to have these resistor values proportional to the transistor
The effect of nonzero base currents can be easily deter- current gain to obtain the highest possible input im-
1965 WIDLAR: LINEAR INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 589

A microampere current source using resistance values

CONTACT at least an order of magnitude less than those normally
I required was also shown. Finally, pinch resistors, devices
which can give large resistances in microcircuits, were
discussed with respect to both their limitations and their
unique properties; examples of how they could be used
effectively in circuit design were introduced.
V It has been suggested that there are far better ap-
proaches available than directly adapting discrete com-
(a) (b)
ponent designs to microcircuits. Many of the restrictions
Fig. 4. Pinch resistors. (a) Structure. (b) Characteristics.
imposed by monolithic construction can be overcome
on a circuit design level. This is of particular practical
significance because circuit design is a nonrecurring cost
in a particular microcircuit while restrictive component
tolerances or extra processing steps represent a coutinuing
expense in manufacture.

APPENDIX

THE EFFECT OF MISMATCHES ONBALANCED BIASING

GND
The assumption that the two transistors in Fig. l(c)
were identical is, of course, not entirely true in a practical
microcircuit. This deviation from reality will now be
Fig. 5. A low-voltage high-gain microphone preamplifier illustrating considered.
the use of pinch resistors. In (1) of the text, the mismatch in emitter-base voltage
and base currents are certainly third-order effects since
the absolute values of V,, and I, are second-order terms.
pedance consistant with satisfactory bias stability.
Another application is the preamplifier shown in Fig. Therefore, (1) will be assumed to hold in this analysis.
5 which was designed as part of a hearing aid amplifier. Equation (2) is, however, strongly affected by the match
With hearing aids, the maximum supply voltage is 1.55 between Q, and Q2. This influence will be reflected by the
equation
volts, so the voltage sensitivity and low breakdown of
pinch resistors is of little concern. However, power drain I,, = I,, + Mm, (14
is a problem, so large resistances are needed. In this
circuit only matching of the pinch resistors (R,, R,, and R3) where AI,, is the change in collector current of Qz due
is required for proper operation. The fact that the pinch to unequal emitter-base voltages and base currents in
resistors correlate with current gain makes the circuit Q1and Q2.
far less sensitive to current gain variations: the pinch Both of the preceding mismatch terms can be combined
resistors and current gains can be varied simultaneously in
over a range greater than 7 to 1 without any noticeable AV, = AVm + R,AI, (24
degradation of performance.
The preceeding examples show that even though pinch where AV,, and AI, are the emitter-base voltage dif-
resistors have extremely poor characteristics by discrete ference and base current difference of the two devices
component standards, certain characteristics, namely operating at equal collector currents. (These terms are
good matching, a correlation between resistor values and chosen because they are important in the performance
current gain and high sheet resistivities make them of dc amplifiers and because data on the parameters is
extremely useful elements in circuit design. The pinch common, both as transistor pairs and as complete inte-
resistors can actually function better than precision re- grated amplifiers.) This AVIS will have the same effect
sistors in certain applications in that they can be used on bias stability as a dc input voltage, equal in magnitude,
to help compensate for production variations in current in series with R, on an ideally balanced amplifier.
gain and the change in gain with temperature. In order to determine the relationship between AVIN
and AI,,, which is the objective of this Appendix, it
CONCLUSIONS becomes necessary to introduce the two expressions found
Biasing techniques have been demonstrated which elim- in [71,
inate the need for the large bypass capacitors required 4VBE
with conventional designs and yield superior performance. IC CTexp. ( - ICT ) (34
590 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ClIRCUIT THEORY DECEMBER

and where
Ah
h
10 cfe2.h
(44 fc1

For RrN >> R,,

which have the same range of validity st,ated for (4)
in the text.
Differentiation of (3a) gives
Since RrN varies drastically over the -55C to + 125C
Arc qIo temperature range commonly expected for integrated
AV,, = kT (54 circuits (10a) can be taken to represent the low-tem-
perature extreme and. (lla) the high-temperature extreme.
Similarly, for (4a) Therefore, a more-than-worst-case solution for full tem-
perature range operation is
AI,
-=- qIB
AVm mlcT (64 ar,, < qAVa
I Cl - kT +
whereas
To give some feeling for the results obtainable, the first
mkT term in (12a) is typically less than 0.02 while the second
R IN=-. (74
PIB te:rm is typically less than 0.07 for full temperature range
orleration.
From this,
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7 =
mAI,
- r = Ah/.,
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