Technical Features
September 2015
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Figure 1: Gate driver circuit diagram with a Bourns transformer
While gate driver-based converters deliver improved efficiency, speed and signal integrity, their high frequency switching features can produce elevated levels of conducted electromagnetic interference (EMI), posing challenges to electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and overall system reliability. To solve this
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Date:
03/29/2026
A good insurance plan is not just good to know about, in many aspects of daily life it is indispensable. In the case of Class X and Class Y capacitors, they are required to function reliably in all parts of mains-connected electrical devices, as they offer a form of insurance — we expect them to protect things th
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Date:
09/26/2015
When I started working with eGaN FETs almost six years ago, I had no idea what to expect from this technology. We had our first preliminary datasheet and even though I had no idea what to expect, it was obvious that, on paper, these devices were much better than your typical MOSFETs – already beyond the theoretical si
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Date:
09/26/2015
Today’s industrial applications demand power supplies capable of delivering ever-higher levels of power density. That trend is escalating as regulatory agencies around the world impose new regulations to achieve higher efficiency, not only at full load, but also in standby mode and across the entire load spectrum. To
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Date:
09/26/2015
The “Energiewende” (energy transition) has resulted in a shift in thinking not only about the generation of electrical energy, but its distribution and consumption as well. Efficient approaches are needed for energy production and transfer on the one hand, and consumption on the other. What plays a role he
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Date:
09/26/2015
The trend in power electronics is moving towards greater integration and more complex subsystems. On a related note, intelligent power modules (IPMs) have made major inroads into the market for motor control applications. These advanced modules combine high-performance IGBTs, diode power devices with integrated ga
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Date:
09/26/2015
Many applications in industrial, instrumentation, optical communication and healthcare industry use multi-channel data acquisition systems that result in increased printed circuit board (PCB) density and thermal power dissipation challenges. The need for increased channel density in these applications is
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Date:
09/26/2015
Lead-acid batteries are widely used in a broad range of industries and applications. The telecom industry uses a series stack of four lead-acid batteries to provide a 48V stack. Energy storage solutions (ESS) use lead-acid batteries in a variety of series and parallel configurations to store energy generated by
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Date:
09/26/2015
Industrial power is a fascinating world, full of amazing projects requiring from designers a large range of competences as well as a tight intimacy with customers and related industries. Powering safety equipment in gas, oil and hazardous substances is a very good example of an area where power designers have to
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Date:
09/24/2015
Characterizing the latest generation of wide-bandgap power semiconductor devices fully demands making the various measurements while the device is in its on-state, its off-state, and while it’s transitioning from one state to another. Although capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements are increasingly important be
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Date:
09/23/2015
Energy is often defined as the amount of power consumed over time, measured in joules (J) or kilowatt-hours (kWh), whereas power is a constant rate of energy usage, measured in watts (W). Thus, while a power rating is typically used to indicate how much electricity a device will consume at a snapshot in ti
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Date:
09/17/2015
The power module market has seen explosive growth in the past few years. With growth rates of roughly 30% compounded annually, it’s a trend that many people are watching. Power modules are a new breed of products in the market that are LGA or QFN based, closed frame power supplies that include the controller, dr
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Date:
09/16/2015
Since the world population is growing, with more migration to urban areas, contemporary cities are looking increasingly for smart solutions to reduce the consumption of energy and resources while improving livability and boosting economic growth. The path forward to develop truly sustainable cities includes un
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Date:
09/12/2015
To realize the potential of solar energy as a power source, the front-end interface between the cells and the energy-extraction circuitry must take into account the unique characteristics of these cells; this can be done via different algorithms and a variety of hardware/software implementations.
A representa
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Date:
09/09/2015
Motors are everywhere in our world, it seems. Consider our vehicles, for example. When is the last time you had to hand-crank a car window up and down to pay a highway toll? Or, for that matter, when did you last manually adjust the seat position or rear-view mirror angles? Typically, motors drive all of these as
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Date:
09/02/2015
The Internet of Things (IoT) represents a class of devices referred to as edge nodes; these require a battery life ranging from weeks to months to decades. An edge node typically contains a microcontroller to perform processing (e.g. encryption, compression, error correction, protocol stack), in addition to a
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Date:
09/02/2015
Modern power converters are moving towards high efficiency, high density, and high switching frequencies. Vendors of power supplies are doing an outstanding job of meeting these goals with a range of new technologies. At the same time, despite the use of advanced control chip technology, many control loops have su
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Date:
09/01/2015
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