Slew-rate enhancement for a single-ended low-power two-stage amplifier

A high slew-rate, two-stage, single-ended amplifier for optical imaging applications is reported. Two auxiliary circuits have been added to the core amplifier to boost the speed of the positive and negative slews. The amplifier is designed using parameters form IBM 0.13 μm technology. It achieves 41.2 dB DC gain, 723 MHz unity-gain bandwidth and 540 V/μs positive and 325 V/μs symmetric slew-rates for a load capacitance of 2 pF. A 357% symmetric improvement is achieved for slew rate while power is only increased by ∼3%. The core amplifier dissipates 98 μW from a 1.2 V supply.