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Improve circuit breaker leakage current response with a voltage supervisor
A residual current detector (RCD) or residual current circuit breaker (RCCB), detects leakage currents when an alternate path to ground is established. RCDs isolate the power source from the leakage...
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Voltage supervisor requirements for e-meter applications
IntroductionAs the electricity grid around the world becomes smarter over time, complex electronic designs are necessary. At the same time, long-term system reliability cannot be compromised. A smart...
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How a small SOT563 DC/DC converter supplies multirail power in industrial...
Hardware design engineers are forever looking for new solutions for their design tasks. But they are also under time constraints to solve all of the challenges of a new project: always smaller, always...
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The problem with short-to-VBUS protection integrated into your USB...
Due to the smaller connector/receptacle size and reduced pin pitch, USB Type-C presents several new failure scenarios that can damage downstream circuitry. The most common failure scenario is...
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How to prevent battery over discharge by using a precise threshold voltage...
Using a buck-boost converter is a convenient way to obtain a fixed supply voltage within the wide voltage range of typical batteries used in low-power devices such as smart meters, wearables or those...
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Output topology options for a voltage supervisor
Having stumbled upon this blog post, I’m assuming that you know the importance of having a voltage supervisor in your electronic design and are wondering how to implement and design with these...
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What does a “lead-free” power MOSFET really mean?
Much confusion exists today with the term “lead-free.” What does it mean? Why is it important? How can you tell if a component or product is lead-free?A web search of the term produces many hits,...
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Searching for the newest innovations in power? Find them at APEC
The Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) is a power engineer’s dream – everyone in the industry attends and the blend of new technologies, new research and new connections creates an electric...
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Design a pre-tracking regulator, part 1: for a positive-output LDO
By Arief Hernadi and Frank DeStasi The efficiency of a low-dropout regulator (LDO) depends on its input voltage and output voltage, since the input current drawn from the power supply will be equal to...
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Pull the tab: How to implement ship mode in your lithium-ion battery design
Remember when you were a kid, and many of your battery-operated toys had a little plastic pull tab on the battery (Figure 1) that you pulled off to make the product come to life? This closes the...
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Four-switch buck-boost layout tip No. 4: routing gate-drive and return paths
Printed circuit board (PCB) layout design plays a critical role in achieving high performance for a four-switch buck-boost regulator. In earlier installments of this series, we discussed strategies for...
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20 million GaN reliability hours and counting
"My advice is to get involved and get started,” — Jack KilbyAbout 20 million reliability hours ago, we built our first gallium nitride (GaN) application board in TI’s Kilby Labs. We watched the...
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Replace your aging optocoupler gate driver
Electric motors are used in elevators, food processing equipment, factory automation, robots, cranes … the list goes on. AC induction motors are common in such applications, and invariably, the...
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How to make a simple nonmagnetic AC/DC power supply
When creating an industrial power supply, one of the most common challenges is transforming the AC voltage supply into a DC voltage supply. Changing an AC voltage to a DC voltage is necessary for...
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Minimize the impact of the MLCC shortage on your power application
There is a growing shortage of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), and the situation is likely to persist through 2020. MLCCs are used in almost every type of electronic equipment, due to their...
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No avalanche? No problem! GaN FETs are surge robust
We live in silicon-dominated world that shapes our thinking. I find it interesting to imagine an alternate universe where the gallium nitride (GaN) power field-effect transistor (FET) was developed...
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4 Reasons why you should use a boost charger for 2-cell battery application
Finding the perfect battery charger integrated circuit (IC) for your portable electronic device design is not always easy, especially when you need a battery with more than one cell in series (1S) for...
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Minimize the impact of the MLCC shortage using D-CAP+™ control mode
As my colleague Yann said in an earlier blog, there is a growing shortage of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), and the situation is likely to persist through 2020. MLCCs are used in almost every...
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Battery-charging tips for video doorbell applications
Figure 1: Video-enabled doorbellOur homes are getting smarter and connecting to the internet with security cameras, thermostats, smart speakers and smart TVs. The video doorbell, seen in Figure 1, is...
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Improvements in solar power efficiency come from the smallest gate drivers
Climate change has been a subject of much debate the past 10-30 years, sparking political discussions on what types of regulations are necessary. In the short term, it’s significantly more expensive to...
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