Voltage Reference With High Tempco

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Samuel Groner

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 19, 2004
Messages
2,940
Location
Zürich, Switzerland
Hi

For an experimental bias compensation schemo I need a voltage reference with a tempco of about -12.6 mV/K. The voltage should be rather low, preferably 1 V or less. Any suggestions for a simple and cheap solution?

Thanks!
Samuel
 
Over a small temperature range, driven by a more-or-less constant current, you can probably find a NTC thermistor of about the right tempco. The impedance will just be that of the resistance which may not be suitable, but the requirement of low voltage is a difficult constraint.

If you relax the latter, you could simply use a transistor as a shunt regulator with a resistive divider: R1 from collector to base, R2 from base to emitter, with the tempco of the B-E diode multiplied by (1+ (R1/R2)). But Vbe is also multiplied by the same amount, so for 12.6mV/C you will have a collector-emitter voltage of about 3.7V (some call this circuit a Vbe multiplier). There is another term working against the negative tempco of Vbe, due to the beta going up with temperature; thus, the lower base current loading of the voltage divider with increased temperature causes the base-emitter voltage magnitude to rise a bit due to that.

If you must have a 1V level with that tempco, provided you have other higher voltages in the circuit available you can offset the ~3.7V with a stable ~2.6V and get the desired one volt.
 
[quote author="Samuel Groner"]Thanks for the suggestions. Not sure what to choose yet, we'll see...

Is there a rule-of-thumb for beta tempco?

Samuel[/quote]

I tend to use 0.5%/degree C as a rule-of-thumb. Most datasheets show some curves for a few temps that can be interpolated.
 
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