Robust True LDO Linear Voltage Regulator and Digitally Trimmable Buffered Precision Voltage Reference for High-Temperature, Low-Voltage Applications

Abstract

We present in this paper two new products for high-temperature, low-voltage (2.8V to 5.5V) power management applications. The first product is an original implementation of a monolithic low dropout regulator (XTR70010), able to deliver up to 1A at 230°C with less than 1V of dropout. This new voltage regulator can source an output current level up to 1.5A. The regulated output voltage can be selected among 32 preset values from 0.5V to 3.6V in steps of 100mV, or it can be obtained with a pair of external resistors. The circuit integrates complex analog and digital control blocks providing state of the art features such as UVLO protection, chip enable control, soft start-up and soft shut-down, hiccup short-circuit protection, customer selectable thermal shut-down, input power supply protection, output overshoot remover and stability over an extremely wide range of load capacitances. The circuit offers a fair ±2% absolute accuracy and is guaranteed latch-up free. The second product is an advanced high-temperature, low-power, digitally trimmable voltage reference (XTR75020). Thanks to a custom, 1-wire serial interface, the absolute precision and the temperature coefficient can be adjusted in order to obtain an accuracy better than 0.5% with a temperature coefficient bellow ±20ppm/°C. On-chip OTP memory for trimming of absolute value and temperature coefficient makes the circuit extremely accurate and almost insensitive to drifts over time and temperature. The circuit features a class AB output buffer able to source or sink up to 5mA and remains stable with any load capacitance up to 50μF. The XTR75020 has nine preset possible output voltages. The source and sink short circuit current always remains bellow 25mA. The quiescent current consumption is 300μA typical at 230°C while the standby current is, in all cases, under 20μA. Both devices are designed on a latch-up free silicon-on-insulator process.