The OPA860 is a versatile monolithic component designed for wide-bandwidth systems, including high performance video, RF and IF circuitry. It includes a wideband, bipolar operational transconductance amplifier (OTA), and voltage buffer amplifier.

The OTA or voltage-controlled current source can be viewed as an ideal transistor. Like a transistor, it has three terminals—a high impedance input (base), a low-impedance input/output (emitter), and the current output (collector). The OTA, however, is self-biased and bipolar. The output collector current is zero for a zero base-emitter voltage. AC inputs centered about zero produce an output current, which is bipolar and centered about zero. The transconductance of the OTA can be adjusted with an external resistor, allowing bandwidth, quiescent current, and gain trade-offs to be optimized.

Also included in the OPA860 is an uncommited closed-loop, unity-gain buffer. This provides 1600MHz bandwidth and 4000V/µs slew rate.

Used as a basic building block, the OPA860 simplifies the design of AGC amplifiers, LED driver circuits for fiber optic transmission, integrators for fast pulses, fast control loop amplifiers and control amplifiers for capacitive sensors and active filters. The OPA860 is available in an SO-8 surface-mount package.