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The Bandgap Reference A Circuit For All Seasons
The Bandgap Reference A Circuit For All Seasons
Behzad Razavi
S
Since its inception in the late 1960s, lowed by another topology presented be tied to VDD. (Early CMOS technologies
the bandgap circuit has served as an by Brokaw in 1974 (Figure 2) [4] and used an n-substrate and hence accom-
essential component in most inte- many others later. modated a vertical npn
grated circuits. This simple, robust The rise of CMOS transistor.) A useful
idea provides a temperature-indepen- technology in the 1970s A useful feature feature of this topology
dent (TI) voltage and a proportional-to- posed the question of of this topology is that the op amp does
absolute-temperature (PTAT) current. whether a stable volt- is that the op not drive resistors and
In this article, we study the principles age reference could be amp does not can thus maintain a high
of bandgap circuit design. created without the drive resistors loop gain.
use of bipolar devices and can thus
A Brief History [5]. However, it was maintain a high The Basic Idea
Semiconductor technology does not observed that the high- loop gain. As mentioned in the pre-
directly offer any electric quantity that threshold mismatch of vious section, the volt-
is nominally independent of the ambi- MOS transistors leads age across a pn junction
ent temperature. Thus, temperature to significant error and drift in such and hence the base-emitter voltage, VBE,
independence has generally been envi- references. Subsequent work there- of a bipolar transistor exhibit a negative
sioned in the form of combining two fore focused on the “native” bipolar TC. It can be shown that, for a constant
phenomena that have opposite tem- transistor available in standard CMOS collector current,
perature coefficients (TCs). For exam- processes [6], [7]. Figure 3 shows an
VBE - (4 + m) VT - E g /q
ple, a resistor with a low TC can be example similar to Brokaw’s cell [8], ex- 2VBE = , (1)
2T T
constructed by placing in series, with cept that the current-measuring resis-
proper weighting factors, a positive-TC tors are moved from the collectors to where T is the absolute temperature,
resistor and a negative-TC resistor. the emitters because the former must m .-3/2,VT = kT/q, and Eg the bandgap
Applying this idea to voltage quan-
tities proved more difficult. It had
been long recognized that the voltage
V+
across a forward-biased diode has a
negative TC (if its bias current does
not change much with temperature). I
However, a positive-TC voltage was
missing. In 1964, Hilbiber of Fairchild VREF = VBE + R 2 ∆VBE
Semiconductor observed that two di- R3
R2
ode stacks biased at different current R2
6K ∆VBE
densities can provide a TI voltage [1]. R3
R1
In 1965, Widlar, from the same com- 600
pany, more explicitly showed that the
base-emitter voltages of two transis-
Q2 Q3
tors biased at different current densi-
ties had a PTAT difference [2] and in
1971 introduced the first bandgap Q1 R 3 ∆VBE
∆VBE 600
circuit (Figure 1) [3]. This was fol-
Ground
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2016.2577978
Date of publication: 2 September 2016 Figure 1: Widlar’s bandgap circuit.
Authorized licensed use limited to: CAMBRIDGE UNIV. Downloaded on September 16,2022 at 21:06:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
First, a CMOS op amp directly driv- poor supply rejection, especially due current, we observe that 2Vout /2T can
ing the feedback resistors must deal to that of the op amp, 3) if driving a be zero but Vout is still around 1.25 V.
with gain-power-stabil- heavy load capacitance How do we create a fraction of this
ity trade-offs. Second, at the output, the circuit value without first generating such
it is difficult to real- can become unstable, es- a high voltage? Let us tie a resistor
In this article,
ize bipolar transistors pecially in cases where from the output node to ground [Fig-
we study the
whose collectors are not A 1 itself contains more ure 7(b)], surmising that the resulting
principles of
grounded; the vertical than one stage, and voltage division creates a zero-TC
bandgap circuit
structure available in 4) if the op amp begins output with a smaller magnitude.
design.
typical CMOS processes with a high output level Since (Vout - VBE3) /R 4 + Vout /R 5 = I 1,
utilizes the p-substrate at power-up, the two we have
as the collector. Third, branches may remain off
R5
the op amp offset is amplified by a indefinitely. The remedies include the Vout = (R I + VBE3), (12)
R5 + R4 4 1
factor of 1 + R 2 /R 3 as it appears in use of large MOS transistors to address
Vout , causing error and temperature the first issue, the choice of an op concluding that the output can be
drift. For example, n = 10 translates amp topology for high supply rejec- arbitrarily small and have a zero TC.
to 1 + R 2 /R 3 . 7.5. tion for the second issue, and adding We now derive the PTAT current, I 1,
To address these issues, we first a start-up circuit to deal with the third. from the circuit of Figure 6(a) and
recognize that resistors R 1 and R 2 As shown in Figure 6(b), a weak ad- arrive at the topology shown in Fig-
in Figure 5 provide equal bias cur- ditional branch creates a large initial ure 7(c) [12]. With a voltage drop of
rents, a function that can be real- imbalance at the input of the op amp, VT ln n across R 3, we have
ized by controlled current sources. forcing its output to go low. After
R5
In the spirit of Figure 3, we arrive the circuit turns on and reaches Vout = (V + R 4 V ln n), (13)
R 5 + R 4 BE3 R 3 T
at the topology depicted in Fig- the desired operating point, M 3 and M 4
ure 6(a). If M 1 and M 2 are identi- turn off. where the MOSFETs are assume d
cal, then VBE1 - VBE2 = VT ln n and identical.
Vout = VBE2 + (1 + R 2 /R 3) VT ln n. The Low-Voltage Bandgap References
bipolar transistors are implemented The basic bandgap expression,
as vertical pnp structures. As with VBE + 17.2VT , takes on a value of about VDD
Figure 3, resistor Rl2 = R 2 can be 1.25 V at T = 300 K, defying direct M1 M2
inserted to ensure VDS1 = VDS2, sup- implementation in today’s low-voltage
Vout
pressing current mismatch due to technologies. We describe one low- A1
R2′ – + R2 VDD
channel-length modulation. voltage example and refer the reader
X Y
The op amp offset is still ampli- to [10] and [11] for others. M3
R3
fied by a factor of 1 + R 2 /R 3 . This For a low-voltage bandgap reference Q1 Q2
issue is ameliorated by choosing a to have a zero TC, it must produce an A nA
M4
large n, say, 20–30, and/or establish- output of the form a (VBE + 17.2VT ),
X
ing a nonunity ratio between I E1 and where a 1 1 is a scaling factor. For (a) (b)
I E2. Specifically, if (W/L) 1 = m (W/L) 2, example, beginning with the branch
the bipolar transistor current den- shown in Figure 7(a) and writing Figure 6: (a) A CMOS bandgap circuit and
sities differ by another factor of m, Vout = VBE3 + R 4 I 1, where I 1 is a PTAT (b) a start-up branch.
leading to
Correction
In the article “Memory Interfaces: Past, Present, and Future” [1], Figure 16 was incorrect due to a production error. The corrected figure is printed below.
55 mm
90 mm
55 mm
Figure 16: Configuration examples for (a) GDDR5x and (b) HBM.
Authorized licensed use limited to: CAMBRIDGE UNIV. Downloaded on September 16,2022 at 21:06:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.