Micrel Announce New Family of Integrated FET DC-to-DC Buck Converters

The devices provide flexible, cost-effective solutions for distributed power systems, communications networking and infrastructure, and industrial applications. The MIC24051/2 (6A), MIC24053/4 (9A), MIC24055/6 (12A) are currently available in volume quantities, with 1,000 quantity pricing starting at $0.91, $1.04 and $1.22 respectively.

Power supply designers today experience growing challenges in identifying flexible cost-optimized solutions for their high-power-density, small-real-estate needs, noted Brian Hedayati, vice president of marketing for high-performance linear and power solutions at Micrel. Micrel's MIC2405x SuperSwitcher f amily utilizes Micrel’s proprietary architectures to enable light-load efficiency and high-VIN to low-VOUT conversions over a wide range of output currents, at an attractive solution cost. This results in exceptional value for systems that require minimum board space and maximum efficiency in order to reduce the power supply heat representing more than 25 percent of the cost of cooling these systems.

The MIC2405x family of devices (MIC24051/2/3/4/5/6) operates with a single-input supply voltage range from 4.5V to 19V, and delivers output currents of 6A, 9A and 12A respectively, all in small footprint MLF-28, 5mmx 6mm packages. The common footprint shared by all devices in this family enables current scalability which in turn provides design flexibility for the power supply designer. This family of regulators has been tailored to be Any Capacitor stable, independent of the output capacitance Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR), thus solving the perpetual problem of stability that power designers face when dealing with distributed output capacitance. Moreover, these buck regulators provide more than 95 percent peak efficiency and operate at 600kHz switching frequency with ±1 percent of output voltage accuracy (with output adjustable down to 0.8V).

The MIC2405x regulators offer a full suite of protection features to ensure protection of the IC during fault conditions. These include under-voltage lockout to ensure proper operation under power-sag conditions, thermal shutdown, internal soft start to reduce the inrush current, and foldback current-limit and hiccup mode short-circuit protection. The devices also feature a power good (PG) output to allow simple sequencing. The MIC2405x regulators are available in a thermally enhanced 28-Lead 5mm x 6mm MLF package.