design

ideas
High-voltage amplifier uses simplified circuit
Jui-I Tsai, Jun-Ming Shieh, Tai-Shan Liao, and
Ching-Cheng Teng, National Chiao Tung Unversity, Taiwan

M
any scientific instruments and
sensors need ac high-voltage drive.
High-voltage drive is useful for
driving electrodes in many applications.
The challenge is to boost the output of a
conventional op amp to high voltages.
Available ac high-voltage amplifier mod-
ules are limited to approximately 1200V
p-p. This Design Idea presents a simpli-
fied ac high-voltage amplifier that uses
complementary, cascaded NMOS and
PMOS transistors (Figure 1). The OP07
op amp has low input-offset voltage, low
input-bias current, and high open-loop
gain. These attributes make this op amp Figure 2 The sinusoidal
Figure 3 The input is 750
useful for high-gain instrumentation ap- input is 8V p-p (top trace), and output mV (top trace), and the output is 200V
plications. In addition, the OP07 features is 1800V p-p (bottom trace). p-p (bottom trace).

1000V excellent stability of offsets and

gain over time and temperature.
R25 R26 Q1 The ac gain of the LM356 stage,
R15
10k 3M which R3, R4, R7, and R9 determine,
3M is approximately 100.
R24
Q11 82k
R27
Q2
The high-voltage MTP2P50E p-
R14 3M
3M
channel MOSFET has maximum
drain-to-source- and gate-to-
R28 drain-voltage ratings of 500V. The
Q3
12V
R23
3M high-voltage BUK456800B n-
C2 82k channel MOSFET has maximum
R2
R5 0.1 !F R10 Q12
20k
3M 10k R29
drain-to-source- and gate-to-
R6 Q4
7.5k 3M drain-voltage ratings of 800V. Q1
12V R11 through Q6 are PMOS transistors,
R1
R4 12V 10k
10k 7 and Q7 through Q12 are NMOS de-
2 – 2M R22 R37 R30
6 R40
3 7
3
CP07 +
6
10k 3M 3M
1k vices. These FETs are well-suited
+ R3 LF356
4
20k
2
– 12V R21 R38 OUTPUT for high-voltage cascade circuits.
4 R31 R36
–12V 10k 3M 4M 10M
They connect symmetrically in se-
–12V R12 Q5 ries to increase their overall break-
FUNCTION R7 R9
10k
GENERATOR 510k 510k
R32 Q7 MONITOR down voltage for power applica-
R13
4M R39 tions. The bias-voltage circuits
10k
R8 C1
10k
R20
comprise separate biasing-resistor
D1
5k 0.022 !F
1N961 82k
R33 Q8
pairs R10 to R13 and R14 to R17; the
R16 4M result is a symmetrical output of
3M the high-voltage amplifier. Figure
2 shows a sinusoidal input of 8V
R34 Q9
Figure 1 Q6
R18 4M
p-p at 100 Hz and an output of
R17 82k 1800V p-p. Figure 3 shows a sinu-
This ac high-voltage 3M
soidal input of 750 mV p-p at 2
amplifier can deliver R19 R35 Q
10k 10 kHz and an output of 200V p-p.
more than 1800V p-p. 4M
The total power bandwidth of the
circuit is approximately 200
!1000V
kHz.!
110 edn | October 14, 2004 www.edn.com