Bandgap voltage reference

A bandgap voltage reference is a voltage reference circuit widely used in integrated circuits. It produces an almost constant voltage corresponding to the particular semiconductor's theoretical band gap, with very little fluctuations from variations of power supply, electrical load, time, temperature (as of 1999^[update], they typically have an initial error of 0.5–1.0% and a temperature coefficient of 25–50 ppm/°C).^[1]

David Hilbiber of Fairchild Semiconductor filed a patent in 1963^[2] and published this circuit concept in 1964.^[3] Bob Widlar,^[4] Paul Brokaw^[5] and others^[6] followed up with other commercially-successful versions.

^ Miller, Perry; Moore, Doug (November 1999). "Precision voltage references" (PDF). Texas Instruments. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-05-17. Retrieved 2024-01-20.
^ US3271660A, Hilbiber, David F., "Reference voltage source", issued 1966-09-06
^ Hilbiber, D.F. (1964). "A new semiconductor voltage standard". 1964 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers. 1964 International Solid-State Circuits Conference: Digest of Technical Papers. Vol. 2. pp. 32–33. doi:10.1109/ISSCC.1964.1157541.
^ Widlar, Robert J. (February 1971), "New Developments in IC Voltage Regulators", IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 6 (1): 2–7, Bibcode:1971IJSSC...6....2W, doi:10.1109/JSSC.1971.1050151, S2CID 14461709
^ Brokaw, Paul (December 1974), "A simple three-terminal IC bandgap reference", IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 9 (6): 388–393, Bibcode:1974IJSSC...9..388B, doi:10.1109/JSSC.1974.1050532, S2CID 12673906
^ Banba, H.; Shiga, H.; Umezawa, A.; Miyaba, T.; Tanzawa, T.; Atsumi, S.; Sakui, K. (May 1999), "A CMOS bandgap reference circuit with sub-1-V operation", IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 34 (5): 670–674, Bibcode:1999IJSSC..34..670B, doi:10.1109/4.760378, S2CID 10495180