For best overall performance, place all circuit components on the same side of the circuit board and as near as practical to the respective LDO pin connections. Place ground return connections to the input and output capacitor, and to the LDO ground pin as close to each other as possible, connected by a wide, component-side, copper surface. To avoid negative system performance, do not use vias and long traces to the input and output capacitors.

A low ESL capacitor combined with low trace inductance limits the total inductance present on the output and optimizes the high-frequency PSRR. To improve performance, use a ground reference plane, either embedded in the PCB or placed on the bottom side of the PCB opposite the components. This reference plane serves to verify accuracy of the output voltage, shield noise, and behaves similar to a thermal plane to spread (or sink) heat from the LDO device when connected to the GND tab. In most applications, this ground plane is necessary to meet thermal requirements.