
The buried-zener debuts
A Short History of References
7
1.4 The buried-zener debuts
In the mid-1970s, another milestone was reached when National Semiconductor
introduced the LM199, the first
buried-zener
monolithic voltage reference, shown in
Figure 1.5. This legendary product, designed by Robert Dobkin, offered a 6.95-volt
reference, with a 0.3-ppm/˚C temperature drift and a noise spec of about 7µV
rms
(10Hz to 10KHz). This was better than anything at the time and still better than most
devices are even today. Uniquely, the device included an on-chip substrate heater for
stabilizing the chip’s temperature, which helped provide it with great accur ...