Conventional Buck Vs. High-Frequency Series-Capacitor Buck: Who Wins?
by Ryan Manack, Pat Hunter, and Rich Nowakowski, Texas Instruments, Dallas, Texas, How2Power Today, Jun 15 2016
Focus:
This article compares a series-capacitor buck converter switching at 4 MHz with a traditional
single-phase synchronous buck converter switching at 500 kHz to show the trade-offs in size and
performance. Key specs for both designs are 12-V input and 1.2-V output at 10 A with ±3%
allowable output ripple voltage. Both designs are based on TI ICs. There isn’t much here on how
to design these two converters, except for explaining the impact of minimum on-time, and how
inductor and output capacitor selection differs for the series-capacitor buck. The authors
compare size, efficiency, thermals, external components, ripple and transient response for the
two designs, and explain which design performs better on each of these criteria.
What you’ll learn:
- How to understand the pros and cons of a high-frequency series-capacitor buck converter versus a conventional buck converter switching at lower frequency
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