Technical Features

March 2022
QSPICE: A Mission to Get SPICE Right

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

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
Date:
11/29/2024
Silicon Carbide Makes for Smarter Semi Fab/Process Power Supplies

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Figure 1: Power supplies used in semiconductor fab equipment are essential for every task at the front and back end of the process, with power density and the ability to be as close to the tool as possible being especially critical in next-gen fabs

Semiconductor device fabrication processes have several distinct and intricate steps. Power supplies used in semiconductor fab equipment are essential for every task at the front and back end of the process. Due to its power density, reliability, and design flexibility, engineers are seeing the benefits of using
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Date:
03/15/2022
Active Front End Rectifier

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1: Introduction Battery chargers for electric vehicles require galvanic isolation between the grid connection and the batteries. Therefore, an EV charger almost always has two stages: a high power-quality rectifier that converts AC to DC, followed by a DC-DC converter utilizing a high-frequency transformer
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Date:
03/15/2022
Closing the Gap on Wide Band Gap Semiconductors?

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Figure 1: Experienced power designers have crossed that technological chasm many times, with the latest one being the migration from analog control to digital (Source: PRBX)

For a power designer, any new technology that makes it possible to improve performance whilst simultaneously making products smaller and more energy efficient is a very exciting concept. Over the last century the world of power electronics has witnessed many innovations, with the latest major one being the move fr
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Date:
03/01/2022
Enabling Super-Dense Flyback Power Supplies

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Figure 1: A passive primary clamp RCD solution (highlighted) is highly dissipative and limits the efficiency and operating frequency of flyback power supplies

Off-line flyback power supplies require a clamp circuit (sometimes called a snubber) on the primary side of the transformer to limit the drain-source voltage stress on the power MOSFET when this switch turns off during normal operation. There are several approaches to designing these clamp circuits. Low-cost pa
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Date:
03/01/2022
Roadblocks to GaN Adoption in Power Systems

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Figure 1: Pricing comparison between eGaN FETs and MOSFETs. Prices were for 1,000 pieces in February 2022

In many applications, such as lidar and space electronics, adoption of GaN has been extremely rapid.  Lidar flourished as a result of the extremely high speed of GaN devices, which is more than 10 times faster than the aging silicon MOSFET.  Space electronics has rapidly accepted GaN-on-Si power transistors du
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Date:
03/01/2022
Evaluating Voltage Regulator Stability Using Step Load Testing

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Figure 1: Test set up for VR stability evaluation

Engineers are busy replacing and updating their aged PC boards that use traditional transistors, typically super-junction silicon MOSFETs and Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs). One hot area in this upgrading process is power supplies for pulse-load applications, such as laser pulse drivers, light bea
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Date:
03/01/2022
Approaches for Driving GaN Devices and Simplifying Gate Drive Design

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Figure 1. GaN transistors enable more efficient, cooler-running, compact, and cost-efficient designs

GaN offers low RDSon/VDSon, high electron mobility, and other characteristics that result in more efficient designs. Higher switching frequencies allow designers to make tradeoffs between efficiency and switching speed for application-optimized designs. These characteristics enable more efficient solutions, run
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Date:
03/01/2022
Using Distributed 48 V Instead of 12 V in Datacenters

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Figure 1: Early datacenters used distributed AC for each shelf in a rack

The measure of datacenter energy efficiency is ‘Power Usage Effectiveness’ or PUE, and the best ‘hyperscale’ installations achieve a figure of about 1.1, or 100 W lost in cooling, distribution and power conversion for every kW used by the IT equipment. As best practices trickle down to smaller datacenters, th
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Date:
03/01/2022
Investigating Power Delivery For Complex Processing

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Figure 1: The functional block diagram of the TPSM8282xA buck converter range (source TI)

Processors are increasingly highly integrated devices. Squeezing more functionality into a single package offers optimal PCB space use, optimises BOM cost, and eases power management challenges. This approach is good news for many applications, from inference at the edge, compute-intensive search acceleration and ind
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Date:
03/01/2022
Why GaN Enables High Efficiency in Totem-Pole PFC-Based Power Designs

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Figure 1: PFC topologies: dual-boost PFC (a) and boost PFC (b)

Almost all of the popular modern-day trends involve an AC/DC power supply, which takes energy from the AC grid and delivers it to the electrical equipment as a well-regulated DC. With the increasing power consumption in these systems, the associated energy losses in the AC/DC power conversion process becomes a si
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Date:
03/01/2022
Safely Connect Solar PV to Electrical Systems

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Figure 1. Longtime Eaton investments in onsite clean energy systems help reduce carbon emissions and energy costs, including this solar PV system at the company’s building outside of Cleveland. Image courtesy of Eaton. Photography: © David Sundberg/Esto

The fact that we’ll fill so much of our future energy needs with solar doesn’t come as a surprise. Businesses and communities have been steadily striving to become self-sufficient power producers that can generate, store, consume and even sell excess renewable energy back to their utility. Knowing what it t
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Date:
03/01/2022
Device Packaging is the Key to Effective Thermal Management

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Figure 1: OBC design presents a number of challenges to power designers

Within the automotive industry, development and innovation continue at a rapid pace in almost all aspects of vehicle design, from the chassis to the powertrain, infotainment, connectivity, and automation. However, with the time taken to recharge electric vehicles (EVs) – especially in-journey – being cited
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Date:
03/01/2022
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