The Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) in Fort Worth, Texas, continued to serve as the platform for a host of significant product releases and the unveiling of interesting technological developments.
Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) introduced what it says is the industry’s smallest, most efficient step-down regulators with integrated FETs to support up to 25A for telecommunications, networking and other applications.
The easy-to-use, 25A, 14V, TPS56221 synchronous SWIFT switcher with integrated NexFET MOSFETs achieves a power density greater than 200 W/in3 with greater than 90% efficiency at high loads from a 12V input to a 1.3V output, delivering up to 25A of continuous output current at 500-kHz switching frequency. TI says that the new TPS56121 15A, 14V synchronous switcher is 3% more efficient at 5V input to 1.2V output and switches twice as fast as similar 15A products in the market.
"Board-mounted power supplies are typically packed with circuitry and require greater power density and power efficiency – especially those systems operating at higher currents," said Sami Kiriaki, Senior Vice President of TI’s Power Management business. "These two new products expand our SWIFT family into higher current applications and allow our customers to achieve breakthroughs in power density, efficiency and thermal management – and ultimately more energy-efficient and reliable end equipment."
The TPS56221 and TPS56121 come in a thermally enhanced 5 x 6mm QFN package, and achieve a total solution size of 315mm² – 30% smaller than other discrete solutions. Both devices are the first switchers to integrate TI’s NexFET technology, providing increased thermal performance, protection, efficiency and reliability. The switchers offer three selectable frequencies of 300 kHz, 500 kHz and 1 MHz for design flexibility and support input voltages of 4.5 to 14V.
ON Semiconductor announced an expansion of its portfolio of ac-dc power solutions for home electronics with the introduction of the NCP1234 and NCP1236 family of fixed frequency pulse width modulation (PWM) current mode controllers. These solutions are targeted at ac-dc adapter applications for laptop/notebook computers, LCD displays, printers and household consumer electronics.
The NCP1234 and NCP1236 family allows high performance offline power supplies to be designed into systems, while minimizing the footprint and board space area required. Utilizing a high voltage process technology, they integrate multiple features such as over power compensation, brownout (NCP1236 only) and ramp compensation without increasing power dissipation or adding external components. High voltage Dynamic Self-Supply (DSS) technology enables direct connection to the line voltage eliminating the need for startup resistors. This technology combined with the family’s ability to automatically decrease frequency at light loads before entering skip mode, ensures maximum efficiency across the entire load range.
"These controllers are optimized to deal with the challenges set by modern power supply designs, where high efficiency and low power consumption are needed for light and no load conditions" said Shane Chilton, Director of ON Semiconductor’s AC-DC products group. "The new devices provide design engineers with the competitive advantages of reduced board size and increased efficiency. Through a high level of integration, minimal additional discrete components are required, thus lowering the overall solution cost and enabling higher power density solutions."
Infineon Technologies announced that medium voltage power MOSFETs, OptiMOS™, are now available in the CanPAK™) package. These products can be used in a wide range of industrial applications like dc-dc converters, solar micro inverters, Maximum Power Point Trackers (MPPT) in solar energy systems, low voltage drives and synchronous rectification for servers. The addition of 60V-150V MOSFETs to the Infineon CanPAK portfolio enables power system engineers to optimize designs for power density, efficiency and excellent thermal behavior while requiring minimum board space. This optimization contributes to cost savings and long operating life in applications ranging from servers to renewable energy systems.
Compared to standard discrete packages, the CanPAK metal ’can’ construction enables double-sided cooling along with almost no package parasitic inductances, leading to highest efficiency and system miniaturization. Thermal resistance on the top side of the package is very low (1.5 K/W (Kelvin per Watt) vs. 55K/W for a traditional DPAK), which allows efficient device cooling from still air convection in the power conversion systems of solar energy installations or fan-assisted airflow, which is common in servers for data centers.
The advantages of CanPAKT are complimented by the performance of OptiMOS® MOSFETs, which feature industry’s lowest RDS(on), and Qg across the entire voltage range. Low Gate charge (Qg), results in the lowest switching losses in fast switching applications, like isolated dc-dc converters for telecom applications as well as solar micro inverters and MPP Trackers in solar energy systems. With the industry’s best RDS(on), Infineon’s CanPAK products exhibit lowest power losses in high current applications such as motor control. They are also ideally suited for industrial applications like synchronous rectification in Switched Mode Power Supplies (SMPS).
