Bypassing the power supply at the amplifier’s supply terminals to minimize noise is a critical aspect of the PCB design process—both for high-speed op amps and any other high-speed circuitry. There are two commonly used configurations for bypassing high-speed op amps.
Rails to ground: This technique, which works best in most cases, uses multiple parallel capacitors connected from the op amp’s power-supply pins directly to ground. Typically, two parallel capacitors are sufficient—but some circuits may benefit from additional capacitors in parallel.
Paralleling different capacitor values helps ensure that the power supply pins see a low ac impedance across a wide band of frequencies. This is especially important at frequencies where the op-amp power-supply rejection (PSR) is rolling off. The capacitors help compensate for the amplifier’s decreasing PSR. Maintaining a low impedance path to ground for many decades of frequency will help ensure that unwanted noise doesn’t find its way into the op amp. Figure 1 shows the benefits of multiple parallel capacitors. At lower frequencies the larger capacitors offer a low impedance path to ground. Once those capacitors reach self resonance, the capacitive quality diminishes and the capacitors become inductive. That is why it is important to use multiple capacitors: when one capacitor’s frequency response is rolling off, another is becoming significant, thereby maintaining a low ac impedance over many decades of frequency.
Starting directly at the op amp’s power-supply pins; the capacitor with the lowest value and smallest physical size should be placed on the same side of the board as the op amp—and as close to the amplifier as possible. The ground side of the capacitor should be connected into the ground plane with minimal lead- or trace length. This ground connection should be as close as possible to the amplifier’s load to minimize disturbances between the rails and ground. Figure 2 illustrates this technique.
This process should be repeated for the next-higher-value capacitor. A good place to start is with 0.01 µF for the smallest value, and a 2.2-µF—or larger—electrolytic with low ESR for the next capacitor. The 0.01 µF in the 0508 case size offers low series inductance and excellent high-frequency performance.
Rail to rail: An alternate configuration uses one or more bypass capacitors tied between the positive- and negative supply rails of the op amp. This method is typically used when it is difficult to get all four capacitors in the circuit. A drawback to this approach is that the capacitor case size can become larger, because the voltage across the capacitor is double that of the single-supply bypassing method. The higher voltage requires a higher breakdown rating, which translates into a larger case size. This option can, however, offer improvements to both PSR and distortion performance. Since each circuit and layout is different; the configuration, number, and values of the capacitors are determined by the actual circuit requirements.
