Generating -5VDC from +5VDC

If you happen to have the March 1984 issue of Radio-Electronics, turn to page 78. This issue has the very first instalment of Robert Grossblatt's "Designer's Notebook" column. In it, he shows a simple circuit which will supply a negative voltage, given a positive voltage. It's basically a 555-based oscillator, and a voltage-doubling rectifier. He claims the negative-voltage output should be good for about 60ma. No-load voltage should be pretty close to the input voltage (but negative), although the voltage will drop a bit, depending on the load. If you put +5V into the circuit, it'll give you around -5V out. load. If you put +5V into the circuit, it'll give you around -5V out. If the load makes the voltage drop too low (-3V or -4V), you could always just feed the circuit with a higher voltage (like maybe 9V or 12V) and then just regulate the output down to -5V using a 7905 regulator. I've used this circuit a couple of times for powering op-amp's, and it works great!


The circuit is set up to oscillate at about 45kHz, with a duty cycle pretty close to 50%. None of the values of any of the parts are terribly critical, so if the capacitors or resistors are "in the ballpark", it should still work okay