The ULN2003 is a monolithic IC consists of seven NPN darlington transistor pairs with high voltage and current capability. It is commonly used for applications such as relay drivers, motor, display drivers, led lamp drivers, logic buffers, line drivers, hammer drivers and other high voltage current applications. It consists of common cathode clamp diodes for each NPN darlington pair which makes this driver IC useful for switching inductive loads.
The output of the driver is open collector and the collector current rating of each darlington pair is 500mA. Darlington pairs may be paralleled if higher current is required. The driver IC also consists of a 2.7KΩ base resistor for each darlington pair. Thus each darlington pair can be operated directly with TTL or 5V CMOS devices. This driver IC can be used for high voltage applications up to 50V.
Note that the driver provides open collector output, so it can only sink current, cannot source. Thus when a 5V is given to 1B terminal, 1C terminal will be connected to ground via darlington pair and the maximum current that it can handle is 500A. From the above logic diagram we can see that cathode of protection diodes are shorted to 9th pin called COM. So for driving inductive loads, it must connected to the supply voltage.
ULN2003 is widely used in relay driving and stepper motor driving applications.