Technical Features

May 2020

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Figure 1: MOSFET channel punch-through showing outputs from previous SPICE simulators vs. QSPICE

QSPICE: A Mission to Get SPICE Right

Siddharth Mohan, design engineer, Qorvo

Qorvo’s QSPICE™ simulator for analog and mixed-signal simulation provides power designers with the tools to confidently evaluate their designs. Free to use, QSPICE improves SPICE basics, supports large amounts of digital logic without performance penalties, and delivers the speed and accuracy needed for rel

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Date:

11/29/2024

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Figure 1 – CISPR 25 Class 5 Initial Testing 100 KHz to 30 MHz

Power Is in the Air

Chris T. Burket, TDK

Recently, the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC or "Qi") technology won the technology battle and is now the low power standard for handsets. This fact was further cemented with implementation of the Qi technology by all leading worldwide handset makers. Car models, with wireless charging available, is now at

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Date:

05/04/2020

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Table 1: Switch states for a 3L-NPC phase leg

Working with High Voltage Renewable Energy Sources

Jonathan Dodge, Senior Applications Engineer, UnitedSiC

The energy landscape is shifting, with growing concern over the use of carbon-based fuels and greater momentum behind making the most of renewables. Photovoltaic (PV) panels and wind turbines are a common site across the landscape and along coastlines. Large renewable installations require higher op

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Date:

05/04/2020

Thermoelectric Coolers Help Machine Vision Systems Look Good

Andrew Dereka, Product Director at Laird Thermal Systems

Machine vision technology has traditionally been used for vision inspection, quality control, robotics, wire bonding and down-hole applications where machine vision systems obtain data from analyzing images of a specific process or activity. Leveraging advanced hardware and software systems, machine vision technology al

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Date:

05/04/2020

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Figure 1. USB-C Enables Compact, Slim Industrial Designs while Supporting Various
Power and Connectivity Standards

USB Type C Power Delivery and Protection

Brett Rickard, Applications Manager, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor

USB Type C adoption in notebooks, tablets, and smartphones continues to increase due to the features it offers. It is an upgrade to existing USB standards like USB 2.0 and 3.1 while also serving as a replacement for standards like Thunderbolt and Displaypor

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Date:

05/04/2020

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Figure 1: Basic block diagram of a Class D amplifier design

Can We Attain Better Audio Amplification? Yes, We GaN!

Jun Honda, Lead Principal Engineer for Class D Audio and Pawan Garg, System Application Engineer, Infineon Technologies

Audio is a complex application space, especially when operating in the realms of the audiophile. The highest-end audio equipment comes with a hefty price tag and audio amplifiers of differing types attract followings of users who believe their choice best reproduces a true interpretation of the original recording being played. While the merits and weaknesses of v

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Date:

05/04/2020

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Figure 1: The stacked SiC FET cascode with an Si-MOSFET die on the source pad of a SiC JFET and its equivalent circuit

Go Green with SiC

Anup Bhalla, VP Engineering, UnitedSiC

Initiatives to go 'carbon' neutral' such as the '2050 long-term strategy' in the EU, to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, have sharpened engineers' focus on power conversion architectures and their efficiency. Minimising losses has always been a design engineer's goal anyway; low values directly reduce energy and cooling costs while equipment can be sma

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Date:

05/04/2020

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Figure 1. Switched-capacitor power inverter (top) and voltage doubler (bottom)

Switched Capacitor Converter for Energy Transfer, Conversion

Mark Laps, Technical Product Manager at KEMET

As a means of controlling the transfer of energy from a source to power a load, switched capacitor converters can offer a simple, inductor-free alternative to conventional circuits such as buck or boost converters. Eliminating the output inductor can remove

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Date:

05/04/2020

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Figure 1. 24 Vdc power supplies are very versatile in that they are compatible with most control system components

DC Power Supplies for Industrial Control and Automation

Jim Davis, Director of Advanced Solutions & Technical Support, Allied Electronics & Automation

Industrial control panels can, and sometimes do, use many different power and control voltages ranging from 480 Vac down to 24 Vac, and 110 Vdc down to 5 Vdc, with occasional designs using voltages outside these ranges. We've previously written about power distribution for control panels gen

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Date:

05/04/2020

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Figure 1: USB Cable Plug Form Factors

Best Practices for Powering USB4

Fionn Sheerin, Principal Product Marketing Engineer, Analog Power and Interface Division, Microchip Technology

The power landscape is getting simpler with industry convergence on USB Power Delivery (PD) standards, and with good implementations USB4 can continue that trend. Ensuring the best possible charging experience across multiple new use cases will depend on several application design decisions. The main purpose o

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Date:

05/04/2020

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Figure 1: Core losses for a typical ferrite material – source Ferroxcube 3C90 data

Transforming EV Charging with New Winding Techniques

Andrea Polti, Global Product Manager – Magnetics, Murata

Modern power conversion techniques all push towards higher efficiency for good reason; energy saving is clearly important but there are applications where functionality is also enhanced. Examples would be alternative energy systems such as solar and wind, and electric vehicle chargers where fewer losses equate to shorter recha

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Date:

05/03/2020

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5 Home IoT Devices that would Benefit from e-Paper Displays

Scott Soong, CEO, Pervasive Displays

E-paper brings several benefits to home IoT systems, enabling them to display information to the user that can be seen in ambient light using minimal power. What's more, the technology can display in color (yellow and red), enabling the delivery of eye-catching alerts. Here we look at five of the be

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Date:

05/03/2020

Figure 1: Replacing a SJ with a SiC MOSFET, switching loss decreases significantly

Solar Inverter Design

Mostafa Khazraei, Senior Staff Application Engineer and Damijan Zupancic, Application Engineer, Infineon Technologies

Due to the ever-increasing demand for a clean and renewable source of energy, installing solar systems has accelerated significantly in the last decade. Contemporary solar applications require very highly efficient, power-dense and lightweight grid-tied inverters. Traditionally, IGBT has been the device of

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Date:

05/03/2020

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Figure 1. Typical PTC and ESD USB 3.0/3.1 application

Protect Industrial IoT Equipment with PTC Resettable Fuses

Nick Stone, Global Product Manager, Circuit Protection, Eaton

PTC resettable fuses can open electric circuits during fault events like one-time fuses, but are resettable, allowing them to achieve longer use over the product's lifetime. Each PTC fuse consists of a positive temperature coefficient material whose internal resistance increases exponentially with an increase in

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Date:

05/03/2020