Electronic – Over driving opamp inputs

The typical way to protect ADC inputs (and many other high impedance inputs) is to have a current limiting resistor and clamping diodes at the pin. Many chips already have clamping diodes inside the chip, but it is often useful to have some outside as well (especially when the integrated clamping diodes do not have proper documentation on their specs, which is most of the time).

Your resistor-divider is already going to function as a current limiting resistor. As a general rule, you want your resistor values to be as high as is practical-- with something in the neighborhood of 10K to 500K being reasonable.

As the resistors go higher in value you start to get weird effects from the parasitic capacitance (lowers your frequency response) and the leakage current of the ADC and diodes (messes up your accuracy). If you are unsure about these things, then pick something on the low side of 10K to 500K. If you have already figured out the math or are willing to just try it and see if it works then go with something higher.

There would be one diode between GND and the input. And another diode between the input and VCC. If you have a signal that goes + and -, then connect one diode to the V+ rail and the other to the V- rail. Orient the diodes in such a way that it works (turn the diodes around and nothing will work). Put the diodes between your ADC and the resistor divider.

It works like this... If you get a voltage spike coming in, the diodes will redirect it to a power rail and not directly into the chip. The current limiting resistor will, duh, limit the current to something reasonable. You want to current to be limited for several reasons: 1. You don't want so much current that the diodes blow up. 2. You don't want so much current going into the power rails that it effects the voltage regulation of that rail.

With this setup, the maximum voltage on the input pin will be VCC + the forward voltage drop of the diode. And the minimum voltage on the input will be GND - the forward voltage drop.

There are hundreds or thousands of appropriate diodes for this. The BAV99 is just one of many, but is a good one to start looking at.

I would try adding Schottky diodes (eg. 1N5819) from the output of each op amp to ground and +5 (four diodes total).

Also put a resistor (something like 1K) in series with the inverting inputs (two resistors total).

You should also make sure there is good bypassing on the 5V supply. Perhaps 10uF ceramic in parallel with 1000uF/6.3V low impedance electrolytic.

The total power dissipation with the output railed could be as much as ~400mW in each amplifier so if you're using anything other than the SOIC package with a nice copper pour around it (and maybe a stick-on heatsink), you could just be overheating the chip. The SC-70 package would die quickly if railed. Maybe put a resistor from the input (if it can be disconnected) to your 2.5V reference so that if the input is disconnected the current drops to about zero.

Ah, I missed that you're using the dual op-amp, as Andy notes, so the power dissipation is doubled. If you switch to two singles in SOIC you might be okay.