New Industry Products

IR Integrated Voltage Regulator Simplifies Design for DC-DC Applications

January 07, 2010 by Jeff Shepard

International Rectifier (IR)® introduced the IR3870M SupIRBuck™ integrated voltage regulator for notebook and desktop computers, game consoles, consumer electronics applications such as set top boxes, and general purpose point-of-load (POL) dc-dc converters.

The IR3870M features a hysteretic constant on-time modulator with adaptive dead-time control and on-state resistance (RDS(on)) current sensing to achieve maximum efficiency for notebooks. The IR3870M is capable of delivering up to 10A in environments with up to 60°C ambient temperatures and features diode emulation for improved light load efficiency. The device also offers a charge pump output (CPO) option for enhancing the MOSFET gate drive to deliver highest efficiency at medium to full load conditions. In addition, the IR3870M has a wide input voltage range of 3 to 26V and can be programmed for output voltages of 0.5 to 12V by an external resistor divider network.

"As with all members of the SupIRBuck family, the IR3870M features IR’s latest advances in control IC, MOSFET and package integration technologies, and is an easy-to-use and fully integrated dc-dc voltage regulator designed to deliver maximum efficiency in systems that require light load as well as full load performance," said John Lambert, IR’s POL products marketing manager, Enterprise Power Business Unit.

The IR3870M also features pre-bias start-up, very precise 0.5V reference, over- and under-voltage shut down, power good output, and enable input with voltage monitoring capability. The device also offers constant on-time control, programmable switching frequency, soft start, and over-current protection.

The SupIRBuck family of versatile wide input, single output integrated point-of-load (POL) dc-dc voltage regulators integrates IR’s high performance control ICs optimized with benchmark HEXFET® MOSFETs in a 5 x 6mm, slim 0.9mm profile power QFN package. With a unique, scalable common footprint, SupIRBuck provides an easy to implement, flexible, compact, cost-effective, high performance POL solution.

The same feature-rich controller IC utilized in the IR3870M is also available as a stand-alone device, the IR3710M. This device allows designers who use the IR3870 for lighter loads to easily scale up to loads as high as 24A by using the IC with a pair of external IR MOSFETs. Both the IR3870M and IR3710M are offered lead free and are RoHS compliant.

Pricing begins at US $2.35 each and US $0.90 each in 1,000-unit quantities respectively for the IR3870MTRPBF and IR3710MTRPBF. The IRDC3870, IRDC3710-DF and IRDC3710-QFN cost $94.00 per kit.