Power Supply IC

The Importance of Power Supply IC

Selecting a power supply IC can be a difficult task for the inexperienced. Some tips will be described below on how to select the IC is at its most basic level that can help beginners take the first step to becoming a power-supply designer.

The main purpose of the power supply IC is to regulate the taking unregulated input voltage and provides regulated output voltage that remains stable in a variety of input voltage and output current.

This accounts for a linear regulator and switching regulator. The Exception to a simple definition is the charge pump. Depending on the particular device, the charge pump output can be either regulated or not regulated.

Sometimes you make a regulator with the regulated output voltage from a regulated input voltage. In this case, the function of the regulator is to convert input voltage to another voltage level, without the need to improve voltage regulation.

The function of the regulator is to convert input voltage to another voltage level, without the need to improve voltage regulation. You may successfully create a circuit without a regulator in some cases, such as portable power equipment directly from the battery.

This approach may cause some problems because the circuits in portable devices usually operate properly within a narrow range of specific voltage. If high speed is required in microprocessors and memory, the voltage range where the batteries can operate beyond acceptable levels. For circuit can receive the appropriate voltage necessary to use a regulator.

If the regulator is not used in portable equipment, battery internal resistance can also cause problems, because the circuit often required different levels of supply current. Causing a voltage level different due to changes of internal resistance batteries.

This problem can be solved a regulator for the output voltage remains stable even though the load current varies. Active circuit regulators maintain the output resistance which is significantly lower than the series’ resistance of the batteries.

Any attempt to design without a regulator challenges the necessity of the steady voltage that regulators provide, despite varying input voltage or output current. However, there is even more to consider. In most cases switching and linear regulators, as with regulated and unregulated charge pumps, serve an additional purpose: they create a voltage with a different magnitude from the voltage that powers them.

This explains for the name DC-DC converter. Technically speaking, all three types of power-supply ICs discussed here (e.g. linear regulators, switching regulators, and charge pumps) are DC-DC converters. However, the term is normally reserved for switching regulators.

It somewhat limited when converting voltage levels, a linear regulator can only produce a voltage lower than the voltage supplying it. Much more versatile, a switching regulator can step up (boost), step down (buck), or invert (change the polarity of) its supply voltage. Charge pumps perform these same three operations, but with the limited output-current capability. (Power Supply IC)

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