I'm designing a lab exercise for 1st year circuits students. They learn about current controlled voltage sources, but we never show them one. I know that transimpedance amplifiers are used for this purpose, but I've only seen them used with devices that produce current, like a photodiode.
I'd like to have them choose a resistor and a voltage to generate a current through that resistor. I want to tell them that the gain of the CCVS is X, and they are required to choose their resistor and voltage so that the output voltage of the CCVS is Y.
a) Can a transimpedance amplifier be used in this way?
b) If not, is there anything that can?
Best Answer
A plain ordinary opamp configured as an inverting gain stage sounds exactly what you are looking for because, that is exactly how they work when fed with a voltage source in series with a resistor. Basically, a transimpedance amplifier is a subset of an opamp inverting amplifier.
You might also be interested in looking up the term virtual earth (as applied to an opamp).