Engineering publications brought to you by Mark Allen

26 May 2015

Buck controller eliminates intermediate power conversion

The ISL8117, from Intersil, is a 60V synchronous step-down PWM buck controller that can bypass the intermediate step-down conversion stage traditionally employed in industrial applications. Its low duty cycle (40ns minimum on time) enables the direct step-down conversion from 48V to a 1V point-of-load. This makes it possible for designers to reduce system complexity and solution cost in industrial, factory automation, medical and communications infrastructure applications.

The ISL8117 uses valley current mode modulation with adaptive slope compensation to enable stable operation for a range of Vin and Vout combinations. Its Vin range of 4.5 to 60V covers all standard input rails from 5V up to 48V and Vout range is configurable from 0.6V to 54V.

System designers can also use the ISL8117's adjustable frequency from 100kHz to 2MHz to reduce system noise, optimise power supply cost, size and efficiency.

The unit is said to achieve up to 98% conversion efficiency with 1.5% Vout accuracy. The ISL8117's low pin count minimises the number of overlapping traces, improving power supply performance.

http://www.intersil.com