Helmand University

Engineering Faculty
Civil Department

Chapter 5
Operational Amplifier

Lecturer: Mohammad Kazim Karimi 11/19/2023

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Operational Amplifiers
3. Ideal Op Amp
4. Inverting Amplifier
5. Non-inverting Amplifier
6. Summing Amplifier
7. Difference Amplifier
8. Cascaded Op Amp Circuits

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 1. Introduction
 Having learned the basic laws and theorems for circuit analysis, we are now
ready to study an active circuit element of paramount importance: the
operational amplifier, or op amp for short.
 An op amp can sum signals, amplify a signal, integrate it, or differentiate it.
 The ability of the op amp to perform these mathematical operations is the
reason it is called an operational amplifier.

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Cont.

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 2. Operational Amplifiers
 An op amp is an active circuit element designed to perform mathematical
operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, differentiation, and
integration.

 The op amp is an electronic device consisting

of a complex arrangement of resistors,
transistors, capacitors, and diodes.
 A full discussion of what is inside the op amp
is beyond the scope of this course.
 It will suffice to treat the op amp as a circuit
building block and simply study what takes
place at its terminals.
 The circuit symbol for the op amp is the triangle.
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 2. Operational Amplifiers
 Op amps are commercially available in integrated circuit packages in several
forms.
 Figure 5.1 shows a typical op amp package..

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Cont.
 The op amp has two inputs and one output.
 The inputs are marked with minus (-) and plus (+) to specify inverting and non-
inverting inputs, respectively.
 An input applied to the non-inverting terminal will appear with the same polarity
at the output,
 while an input applied to the inverting
terminal will appear inverted at the output.
 As an active element, the op amp must be
powered by a voltage supply.

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Cont.
 The equivalent circuit model of an op amp is shown in Fig.
 The output section consists of a voltage-controlled source in series with the output
resistance Ro.
 It is evident from Fig that the input resistance Ri is the Thevenin equivalent
resistance seen at the input terminals, while the output resistance Ro is the
Thevenin equivalent resistance seen at the output.
 The differential input voltage vd is given by:

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Cont.
 where V1 is the voltage between the inverting
terminal and ground and V2 is the voltage
between the non-inverting terminal and
ground.
 The op amp senses the difference between
the two inputs, multiplies it by the gain A,
and causes the resulting voltage to appear at
the output. Thus, the output vo is given by:

 A is called the open-loop voltage gain

because it is the gain of the op amp without
any external feedback from output to input. 11/19/2023
Cont.

 A practical limitation of the op amp is that the magnitude of its output voltage
cannot exceed |VCC|. In other words, the output voltage is dependent on and is
limited by the power supply voltage.
 Figure illustrates that the op amp can operate in three modes, depending on the
differential input voltage vd:

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Cont.
 If we attempt to increase vd beyond the linear range, the op amp becomes
saturated and yields vo = VCC or vo = -VCC.

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 3. Ideal Op Amp
 To facilitate the understanding of op amp circuits, we will assume ideal op
amps. An op amp is ideal if it has the following characteristics:

 An ideal op amp is an amplifier with infinite open-loop gain, infinite input

resistance, and zero output resistance.

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Cont.
 Two important characteristics of the ideal op amp are:
1. The currents into both input terminals are zero:

2. The voltage across the input terminals is equal to zero.

 Thus, an ideal op amp has zero current into its two input terminals and the
voltage between the two input terminals is equal to zero.

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 4. Inverting Amplifier
 The first of such op amp circuits is the inverting amplifier shown in Fig. In this
circuit, the non-inverting input is grounded, vi is connected to the inverting
input through R1, and the feedback resistor Rf is connected between the
inverting input and output.
 Our goal is to obtain the relationship between the input voltage vi and the
output voltage vo. Applying KCL at node 1,

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Cont.

 But v1 = v2 = 0 for an ideal op amp, since the non-inverting terminal is

grounded. Hence,

 An inverting amplifier reverses the polarity of the input signal while amplifying
it. Notice that the gain is the feedback resistance divided by the input resistance
which means that the gain depends only on the external elements connected to
the op amp.

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 5. Non-inverting Amplifier
 Another important application of the op amp is
the non-inverting amplifier shown in Fig.
 In this case, the input voltage vi is applied
directly at the non-inverting input terminal, and
resistor R1 is connected between the ground and
the inverting terminal.

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Cont.
 A non-inverting amplifier is an op amp circuit designed to provide a positive
voltage gain. we notice that the gain depends only on the external resistors.
 Notice that if feedback resistor Rf = 0 (short circuit) or R1= ∞ (open circuit) or
both, the gain becomes 1.
 Under these conditions (Rf = 0, R1= ∞), op amp is called a voltage follower
(or unity gain amplifier) because the output follows the input.
 Thus, for a voltage follower:

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Cont.
 Such a circuit has a very high input impedance and is therefore useful as an
intermediate-stage (or buffer) amplifier to isolate one circuit from another, as
portrayed in Fig. 5.18.

 The voltage follower minimizes interaction between the two stages and
eliminates interstage loading.

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 For the op-amp circuit in Fig. 5.19, calculate the output voltage vo.

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 6. Summing Amplifier
 A summing amplifier ( is an op amp
circuit that combines several inputs and
produces an output that is the weighted
sum of the inputs.

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Calculate Vo and io in the op amp circuit in Figure.

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 7. Difference Amplifier
 A difference amplifier (subtractor) is
a device that amplifies the difference
between two inputs but rejects any
signals common to the two inputs.

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 8. Cascaded Op Amp Circuits
 A cascade connection is a head-to-tail arrangement of two or more op amp
circuits such that the output of one is the input of the next.

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Find vo and io in the circuit in Figure.

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