OP-AM Applications

20,13/02/2021
What is an Operational Amplifier (Op-
amp)?
Operational Amplifiers, also known as Op-amps, are
basically a voltage amplifying device designed to be
used with components like capacitors and resistors,
between its in/out terminals.
They are essentially a core part of analog devices.
Feedback components like these are used to
determine the operation of the amplifier.
The amplifier can perform many different
operations (resistive, capacitive, or both), giving it
the name Operational Amplifier.
Example of an Op-amp in schematics
OP AMP pin

Offset null
Set equal inputs to
inverting and non
inverting pins and
adjust out put to
zero.(setting offset
null)
Op-amps are linear devices that are ideal for DC
amplification and are used often in signal
conditioning, filtering or other mathematical
operations (add, subtract, integration and
differentiation).

The operational amplifier is arguably the most

useful single device in analog electronic circuitry.
With only a handful of external components, it can
be made to perform a wide variety of analog signal
processing tasks.
Modern designs have been engineered with
durability in mind as well.
One key to the usefulness of these little circuits
is in the engineering principle of feedback,
particularly negative feedback, which
constitutes the foundation of almost all
automatic control processes.
 Op-amp Parameter and Idealized
Characteristic
• Open Loop Gain, (Avo)
Infinite – The main function of an operational
amplifier is to amplify the input signal and the
more open loop gain it has the better.
Open-loop gain is the gain of the op-amp
without positive or negative feedback and for
such an amplifier the gain will be infinite but
typical real values range from about 20,000 to
200,000.
• Input impedance, (ZIN)
Infinite – Input impedance is the ratio of input voltage to input
current and is assumed to be infinite to prevent any current
flowing from the source supply into the amplifiers input
circuitry ( IIN = 0 ).
Real op-amps have input leakage currents from a few pico-
amps to a few milli-amps.

• Output impedance, (ZOUT)

Zero – The output impedance of the ideal operational
amplifier is assumed to be zero acting as a perfect internal
voltage source with no internal resistance so that it can supply
as much current as necessary to the load. This internal
resistance is effectively in series with the load thereby
reducing the output voltage available to the load. Real op-
amps have output impedances in the 100-20kΩ range.
• Bandwidth, (BW)
Infinite – An ideal operational amplifier has an infinite
frequency response and can amplify any frequency signal
from DC to the highest AC frequencies so it is therefore
assumed to have an infinite bandwidth.
With real op-amps, the bandwidth is limited by the Gain-
Bandwidth product (GB), which is equal to the
frequency where the amplifiers gain becomes unity.
• Offset Voltage, (VIO)
Zero – The amplifiers output will be zero when the
voltage difference between the inverting and the non-
inverting inputs is zero, the same or when both inputs are
grounded. Real op-amps have some amount of output
offset voltage.
OP-AMP applications
In this Inverting Amplifier circuit the operational
amplifier is connected with feedback to produce
a closed loop operation.
When dealing with operational amplifiers there
are two very important rules to remember
about inverting amplifiers, these are: “No
current flows into the input terminal” and that
“V1 always equals V2”.
However, in real world op-amp circuits both of
these rules are slightly broken.
This is because the junction of the input and
feedback signal ( X ) is at the same potential as
the positive ( + ) input which is at zero volts or
ground then, the junction is a “Virtual Earth”.
Because of this virtual earth node the input
resistance of the amplifier is equal to the value
of the input resistor, Rin and the closed loop
gain of the inverting amplifier can be set by the
ratio of the two external resistors.
As the open loop DC gain of an operational amplifier is
extremely high we can therefore afford to lose some of
this high gain by connecting a suitable resistor across the
amplifier from the output terminal back to the inverting
input terminal to both reduce and control the overall gain
of the amplifier. This then produces and effect known
commonly as Negative Feedback, and thus produces a
very stable Operational Amplifier based system.

Negative Feedback is the process of “feeding back” a

fraction of the output signal back to the input, but to
make the feedback negative, we must feed it back to the
negative or “inverting input” terminal of the op-amp
using an external Feedback Resistor called Rƒ. This
feedback connection between the output and the
inverting input terminal forces the differential input
voltage towards zero.
This effect produces a closed loop circuit to the
amplifier resulting in the gain of the amplifier
now being called its Closed-loop Gain. Then a
closed-loop inverting amplifier uses negative
feedback to accurately control the overall gain of
the amplifier, but at a cost in the reduction of
the amplifiers gain.
We said above that there are two very important rules to
remember about Inverting Amplifiers or any operational
amplifier for that matter and these are.

• No Current Flows into the Input Terminals

• The Differential Input Voltage is Zero as V1 = V2 = 0
(Virtual Earth)
Then by using these two rules we can derive the equation
for calculating the closed-loop gain of an inverting
amplifier, using first principles.

Current ( i ) flows through the resistor network as shown

 Quiz
Consider Vin=Asin(ωt),and output as 10Asin(ωt)
Of a OP amp. Draw the possible OP amp circuit
with input and output wave forms.
In the previous Inverting Amplifier circuit, we said
that for an ideal op-amp “No current flows into the
input terminal” of the amplifier and that “V1 always
equals V2”. This was because the junction of the
input and feedback signal ( V1 ) are at the same
potential.

In other words the junction is a “virtual earth”

summing point. Because of this virtual earth node
the resistors, Rƒ and R2 form a simple potential
divider network across the non-inverting amplifier
with the voltage gain of the circuit being
determined by the ratios of R2 and Rƒ as shown
below.
Then using the formula to calculate the output voltage of a potential divider
network, we can calculate the closed-loop voltage gain ( AV ) of the Non-
inverting Amplifier as follows:
Then the closed loop voltage gain of a Non-
inverting Operational Amplifier will be given as
 Voltage Follower (Unity Gain Buffer)
If we made the feedback resistor, Rƒ equal to zero,
(Rƒ = 0), and resistor R2 equal to infinity, (R2 = ∞),
then the resulting circuit would have a fixed gain of
“1” (unity) as all the output voltage is fed back to
the inverting input terminal (negative feedback).
This configuration would produce a special type of
the non-inverting amplifier circuit called a Voltage
Follower, also known as a “unity gain buffer”.
 the voltage gain of the amplifier is therefore given as

In this non-inverting circuit configuration, the input impedance Rin has increased
to infinity and the feedback impedance Rƒ reduced to zero.
 The Differentiator Amplifier

The input signal to the differentiator is applied to the capacitor. The

capacitor blocks any DC content so there is no current flow to the
amplifier summing point, X resulting in zero output voltage. The
capacitor only allows AC type input voltage changes to pass through and
whose frequency is dependant on the rate of change of the input signal.
Since the node voltage of the operational amplifier at its
inverting input terminal is zero, the current, i flowing through
the capacitor will be given as:
 Op-amp Differentiator Waveforms
If we apply a constantly changing signal such as a
Square-wave, Triangular or Sine-wave type signal to the
input of a differentiator amplifier circuit the resultant
output signal will be changed and whose final shape is
dependant upon the RC time constant of the
Resistor/Capacitor combination.
The Integrator Amplifier
As its name implies, the Op-amp Integrator is an
operational amplifier circuit that performs the
mathematical operation of Integration, that is
we can cause the output to respond to changes
in the input voltage over time as the op-amp
integrator produces an output voltage which is
proportional to the integral of the input voltage.
If feed input signal(step) to Rin,
the feedback capacitor, C begins to charge up due to the
influence of the input voltage, its impedance Xc slowly
increase in proportion to its rate of charge.
The capacitor charges up at a rate determined by the RC
time constant, ( τ ) of the series RC network. Negative
feedback forces the op-amp to produce an output voltage
that maintains a virtual earth at the op-amp’s inverting
input.
the potential voltage, Vc developed across the capacitor
slowly increases causing the charging current to decrease
as the impedance of the capacitor increases.
This results in the ratio of Xc/Rin increasing producing a
linearly increasing ramp output voltage that continues to
increase until the capacitor is fully charged.
The step is converted to ramp.(which means integrating)
the rate of charge of voltage across the
capacitor is given as:
Vout is minus due to: In is fed into inverting input to the OP amp
The Differential Amplifier
Thus far we have used only one of the operational
amplifiers inputs to connect to the amplifier, using
either the “inverting” or the “non-inverting”
input terminal to amplify a single input signal
with the other input being connected to ground.

But as a standard operational amplifier has two

inputs, inverting and no-inverting, we can also
connect signals to both of these inputs at the same
time producing another common type of
operational amplifier circuit called a Differential
Amplifier.
By connecting one voltage signal onto one input
terminal and another voltage signal onto the
other input terminal the resultant output
voltage will be proportional to the “Difference”
between the two input voltage signals of V1 and
V2.
By connecting each input in turn to 0v ground we can use
superposition to solve for the output voltage Vout. Then the
transfer function for a Differential Amplifier circuit is given as:

V1 input apply inverter equation

 V2 input apply non-inverter equation

If the input resistances are chosen such that, R2 =

R1 and R4 = R3, then
V2 = {R3 / R1} * V2
The Summing Amplifier
In this simple summing amplifier circuit, the output voltage,
( Vout ) now becomes proportional to the sum of the input
voltages, V1, V2, V3, etc. Then we can modify the original
equation for the inverting amplifier to take account of these new
inputs thus:
 Summing Amplifier Example No1

Find the output voltage of the following Summing Amplifier circuit

 Active filter & passive filter
The major difference between active and passive
filter is that an active filter uses active components
like transistor and op-amp for the filtering of
electronic signals.
As against, a passive filter uses passive components
like resistor, inductor and capacitor to generate a
signal of a particular band. (they do not depend
upon an external power supply and/or they do not
contain active components such as transistors or
battery)
Active Low Pass Filter
This first-order low pass active filter, consists
simply of a passive RC filter stage providing a
low frequency path to the input of a non-
inverting operational amplifier.
The amplifier is configured as a voltage-follower
(Buffer) giving it a DC gain of one, Av = +1 or
unity gain.
 Active High Pass Filter

High pass filter as unity gain

Band Stop Filter/Notch filter
Active Band Pass Filter
low pass response and the other half representing
high pass response as shown