Highly integrated PWM controllers

6 February 2008 Power Electronics / Power Management

STMicroelectronics has extended its portfolio of power management devices with a new family of flexible and high-performance PWM (pulse width modulation) controllers intended for motherboard and POL (point of load) markets. Four new products - L6726A, L6727, L6728 and L6728A - integrate a voltage reference, control logic, gate drivers, monitoring and protection circuits into standard SO-8 or tiny 3 x 3 mm DFN packages. Two of the chips offer additional features for high-level applications, including a PowerGOOD output to report power status and the output voltage sense for accurate over-voltage and under-voltage protection.

The L6726A and L6727 are low-cost single-phase PWM controllers, with embedded high-current drivers, enabling the easy creation of general purpose DC-DC step-down converters with excellent performance for a broad range of applications - from desktop PC sub-systems, such as memories and chipsets, to general-purpose power supplies.

The L6728 and L6728A add to the simpler devices the characteristics required by the high-end motherboard market, including plus or minus 0,8% voltage accuracy over line and temperature variations, a PowerGOOD output to provide realtime information on output-voltage status, and the chip-scale 10-lead DFN package. They offer a fixed-frequency 300 kHz (L6728) or 600 kHz (L6728A) oscillator, for simple but flexible application design. These devices are particularly suited to servers and niPOL (non-isolated point of load) applications.

With embedded high-current, high-speed N-channel MOSFET drivers, the chips can be used in the design of power applications driving from several Amps to more than 30 Amps. They operate over a wide input voltage range of 1,5 V to 18 V, while the integrated 0,8 V voltage reference ensures 1% (L6726A, L6727) or up to 0,8% (L6728, L6728A) output accuracy. Sensorless current monitoring, through a low-side power MOSFET, avoids the cost of an external current-sensing resistor and saves board space, and the single- or dual-level over-current protection has programmable thresholds. A range of other features is designed to increase efficiency and reduce the external component count.

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