To program the cathode voltage to a regulated voltage a resistive bridge must be shunted between the cathode and anode pins with the mid point tied to the reference pin. This can be seen in Figure 9-1, with R1 and R2 being the resistive bridge. The cathode/output voltage in the shunt regulator configuration can be approximated by the equation shown in Figure 9-1. The cathode voltage can be more accurately determined by taking in to account the cathode current with Equation 1.

For this equation to be valid, TL1431 must be fully biased so that it has enough open loop gain to mitigate any gain error. This can be done by meeting the Imin specification denoted in Section 6.5.