A 1.2-μm BiCMOS sample-and-hold circuit with a constant-impedance, slew-enhanced sampling gate

A new sampling gate circuit, with dual outputs functioning alternately in the track and hold modes, is integrated in an open-loop sample-and-hold circuit architecture achieving greater than 450-MHz small-signal input bandwidth and 100-MHz maximum sample rate. The sampling gate also incorporates slew enhancement techniques to achieve (+430 V/μs, -510 V/μs) slew rate and features a `built-in´ buffer to maintain constant input impedance for both the track and hold modes, simplifying design of the front-end input buffer. Special on-chip clock generation circuits are used to minimize sampled pedestal (+4 mV). Power dissipation is less than 300 mW, including output driver. Measured harmonics are 58 dB down for a 2 V_p-p 20-MHz sine wave sampled at 100 MHz