Voltage Regulator
Voltage Regulator
Voltage Regulator
We will see about one of the most commonly used regulator IC’s, the 7805 Voltage Regulator
IC. A regulated power supply is very much essential for several electronic devices due to the
semiconductor material employed in them have a fixed rate of current as well as voltage. The
device may get damaged if there is any deviation from the fixed rate.
One of the important sources of DC Supply are Batteries. But using batteries in sensitive
electronic circuits is not a good idea as batteries eventually drain out and loose their potential
over time. Also, the voltage provided by batteries are typically 1.2V, 3.7V, 9V and 12V. This is
good for circuits whose voltage requirements are in that range. But, most of the TTL IC’s work
on 5V logic and hence we need a mechanism to provide a consistent 5V Supply.
Here comes the 7805 Voltage Regulator IC to the rescue. It is an IC in the 78XX family of linear
voltage regulators that produce a regulated 5V as output.
They are available in several IC Packages like TO-220, SOT-223, TO-263 and TO-3. Out of
these, the TO-220 Package is the most commonly used one (it is the one shown in the above
image).
Some of the important features of the 7805 IC are as follows:
PIN
PIN DESCRIPTION
NO.
2 GROUND Pin 2 is the GROUND Pin. It is common to both Input and Output.
3 OUTPUT Pin 3 is the OUTPUT Pin. The output regulated 5V is taken at this
pin of the IC.
Working
The AC power supply from mains first gets converted into and unregulated DC and then into a
constant regulated DC with the help of this circuit. The circuit is made up of transformer, bridge
rectifier made up from diodes, linear voltage regulator 7805 and capacitors.
If you observe, the working of the circuit can be divided into two parts. In the first part, the AC
Mains is converted into unregulated DC and in the second part, this unregulated DC is converted
into regulated 5V DC. So, let us start discussing the working with this in mind.
Initially, a 230V to 12V Step down transformer is taken and its primary is connected to mains
supply. The secondary of the transformer is connected to Bridge rectifier (either a dedicated IC
or a combination of 4 1N4007 Diodes can be used).
A 1A fuse is placed between the transformer and the bridge rectifier. This will limit the current
drawn by the circuit to 1A. The rectified DC from the bridge rectifier is smoothened out with the
help of 1000μF Capacitor.
So, the output across the 1000μF Capacitor is unregulated 12V DC. This is given as an input to
the 7805 Voltage Regulator IC. 7805 IC then converts this to a regulated 5V DC and the output
can be obtained at its output terminals.
7805 Voltage Regulator IC
The first important point to note is that the input voltage should always be greater than the
output voltage (atleast by 2.5V).
The input current and output current are almost identical. This means that when a 7.5V 1A
supply is given at input, the output will be 5V 1A.
The remaining power is dissipated as heat and hence a heat sink like the one shown below
must be used with 7805 IC.