Negative Voltage supply is very much necessary in Analog
circuits and it is extremely necessary if
you are playing with dual polarity signals also called as bipolar
signals.
Although there are number of solutions available to generate
negative supply. But Best and easy of them is the converting current positive
supply in to the negative.
This saves your design time and component cost. And I must
say, I am impressed by such small-little IC named ICL7660. I used the one from
Intersil, CMOS Voltage Converter, apparently all the other Semiconductor Manuf.
Produce them.
Background story goes like this
We were involved in building data acquisition system to
conduct the field survey , required for
the tidal energy generation program. We were supposed to measure all the
critical environmental parameters in the area where tidal power plant is to be
built.
Parameters like Temperature, Humidity and Pressure in
surrounding atmosphere, Water level, Water temperature.
We were using number of Analog and Digital Sensors to carry
out the task. That’s when we needed Negative supply, specifically speaking for
RTD signal conditioning circuit.
Our complete system was powered from +12V
Battery, We had no option but to find the better Voltage converter.
ICL7660 is the best choice for voltage conversion.
It can easily convert positive voltage from +1.5V to +10V. It is really
efficient too. And requires just 2-3 external components.
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| ICL7660 Circuit |
We immediately order them, and on the next day we performed
breadboard test, which was 100% successful.
There are various other applications you can realize, by
using tiny little ICL7660. Do not forget to go through the Datasheet .


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