TI Introduces New Hi-Z Buffer Amplifier
By eliminating ASICs, designers who use TI’s buffer can get to market faster while achieving a wide dynamic range at a fraction of the cost.
Texas Instruments (TI) has released the industry’s widest-bandwidth high-input-impedance (Hi-Z) buffer amplifier, capable of supporting frequency bandwidths as high as 3 GHz.
The wider bandwidth and high slew rates of the BUF802 enable higher signal throughput and minimal input settling time.
Designers can leverage this faster throughput to measure higher-frequency signals more accurately in test and measurement applications including oscilloscopes, active probes and high-frequency data-acquisition systems.
The bandwidth achieved by the BUF802 was previously only possible by using application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that can increase system design time, complexity and cost. By eliminating ASICs, designers who use TI’s buffer can get to market faster while achieving a wide dynamic range at a fraction of the cost.
Previous alternatives to ASIC-based design implementations required dozens of discrete components such as field-effect transistors (FETs), protection diodes and transistors.
These discrete, FET-input amplifier-based implementations add to a design’s bill-of-materials (BOM) cost and system complexity and are unable to deliver the same bandwidth as ASICs, thus limiting the signal throughput of data-acquisition applications.
The BUF802 provides a single-chip alternative to ASICs or FET-input amplifier-based implementations by integrating the features of discrete components while providing 10 times wider bandwidth than FET-input amplifiers, matching the performance of custom ASICs.
The flexible BUF802 is the industry’s first buffer to enable quiescent current adjustment for a range of bandwidth and signal swing requirements, from 100 MHz to 3 GHz at 1-V peak to peak (VPP) and as high as 2 GHz at 2 VPP.
This wide adjustment range for bandwidth and signal swing allows designers to easily scale their front-end designs across multiple data-acquisition applications, easing system cost and redesign.
Integrated functional modes allow engineers to use the BUF802 as a standalone buffer or in a composite loop with a precision amplifier like the OPA140.
As a stand-alone buffer, the BUF802 can help achieve high input impedance and high slew rates in applications that can tolerate 100-mV offsets or where the signal chain is AC-coupled.
In a composite loop, the new buffer can achieve high DC precision and 3-GHz bandwidth in applications requiring 1 μV/°C maximum offset drift.
