The LM317 is a popular adjustable linear voltage regulator.

It was designed by Robert C Dobkin in

1976 while he worked at National Semiconductor.

The LM337, a negative complement to the LM317, regulates voltages below, rather than above, the
reference. It was designed by Robert "Bob" Pease.

Contents
[hide]

1Specifications

2Operation

o 2.1Voltage regulator

o 2.2Current regulator

3Compared to 78xx/79xx

4See also

5References

6External links

Specifications[edit]

Part pinout of LM317T showing its constant voltage reference

Attribute Value

Vout range 1.25 V 37 V

Vin Vout difference 3 V 40 V

Operation ambient temperature 0 C 125 C

Output Imax 1.5 A

Minimum Load Current 3.5 mA typical, 12 mA maximum[1]

Operation[edit]
Main article: Linear regulator

As linear regulators, the LM317 and LM337 are used in DC to DC converter applications.

Linear regulators inherently waste as much current as they supply. When this current is multiplied by
the voltage difference between input and output, a significant amount of heat results. Therefore the
use of an LM317 commonly also requires a heat sink. For large voltage differences, the energy lost
as heat can ultimately be greater than that provided to the circuit. This is the trade-off for using linear
regulators which are a simple way to provide a stable voltage with few additional components. The
alternative is to use a switching voltage regulator which is usually more efficient but has a larger
footprint and requires a larger number of associated components.

In packages with a heat-dissipating mounting tab, such as TO-220, the tab is connected internally to
the output pin which may make it necessary to electrically isolate the tab or the heat sink from other
parts of the application circuit. Failure to do this may cause the circuit to short.

Voltage regulator[edit]

Schematic of LM317 in a typical voltage regulator configuration, including decoupling capacitors to address
input noise and output transients.

The LM317 has three pins: INput, OUTput, and ADJustment. The device is conceptually an op
amp with a relatively high output current capacity. The inverting input of the amp is the adjustment
pin, while the non-inverting input is set by an internal bandgap voltage referencewhich produces a
stable reference voltage of 1.25 V.

A resistive voltage divider between the output and ground configures the op amp as a non-inverting
amplifier so that the voltage of the output pin is continuously adjusted to be a fixed amount, the
reference voltage, above that of the adjustment pin. Ideally, this makes the output voltage:

Vout = Vref (1 + RL/RH)

Because some quiescent current flows from the adjustment pin of the device, an error term is
added:

Vout = Vref (1 + RL/RH) + IQRL

To make the output more stable, the device is designed to keep the quiescent current at or
below 100A, making it possible to ignore the error term in nearly all practical cases. [2]

Current regulator[edit]

A constant current source circuit constructed with LM317

The device can be configured to regulate the current to a load, rather than the voltage, by
replacing the low-side resistor of the divider with the load itself. The output current is that
resulting from dropping the reference voltage across the resistor. Ideally, this is:

Iout = Vref/RH

Accounting for quiescent current, this becomes:

Iout = (Vref/RH) + IQ

LM317 can also be used to design various other circuits like 0 V to 30 V regulator
circuit, adjustable regulator circuit with improved ripple rejection, precision current
limiter circuit, tracking pre-regulator circuit, 1.25 V to 20 V regulator circuit with
minimum program current, adjustable multiple on-card regulators with single control,
battery charger circuit, 50 mA constant current battery charger circuit, slow turn-on
15 V regulator circuit, ac voltage regulator circuit, current-limited 6 V charger circuit,
adjustable 4 V regulator circuit, high-current adjustable regulator circuit and many
more. [3]

Compared to 78xx/79xx[edit]
The LM317 is an adjustable analogue to the popular 78xx fixed regulators. Like the
LM317, each of the 78xx regulators is designed to adjust the output voltage until it is
some fixed voltage above the adjustment pin (which in this case is labeled
"ground").

The mechanism used is similar enough that a voltage divider can be used in the
same way as with the LM317 and the output follows the same formula, using the
regulator's fixed voltage for Vref (e.g. 5 V for 7805). However, the 78xx devices'
quiescent current is substantially higher and less stable. Because of this, the error
term in the formula cannot be ignored and the value of the low-side resistor
becomes more critical.[4] More stable adjustments can be made by providing a
reference voltage that is less sensitive than a resistive divider to current fluctuations,
such as a diode drop or a voltage buffer. The LM317 is designed to compensate for
these fluctuations internally, making such measures unnecessary.

The LM337 relates in the same way to the fixed 79xx regulators.