High-efficiency DC-DC converter evaluation board for fast charger designs

Silanna Semiconductor offers an evaluation board that will aid engineers in quickly building and testing 100W end-to-end fast charger applications constructed around the company's CO2 Smart Power family of wide-voltage, high-frequency POL converters.

The SZDL3105BB-EVB02 buck converter design example is configured for a 5V to 20V at 5A output and incorporates all required connections to sufficiently test and evaluate the efficiency and other performance metrics of the company's SZDL3105B fully-integrated DC-DC converter. A range of compatible daughter boards provides rapid configuration of various USB-PD and QC charging use cases.

The design example, pre-configured for operation with inputs from 7.5V to 24V, may be evaluated as a general-purpose POL application or in-circuit with a USB port controller. Available daughterboards provide Weltrend WT6633P (Qualcomm QC2/3/4, USB-PD), Power Integrations CHY103 (Qualcomm QC3) and Cypress CYPD3175 (Qualcomm QC4, USB-PD) controllers.

"OEMs are looking to develop the smallest, lightest, high-power USB-PD and QC fast chargers within tight time-to-market deadlines," says Ahsan Zaman, Silanna Semiconductor's director of product marketing. "By speed the evaluation of our industry-leading buck converters in a variety of different scenarios this evaluation board and the associated daughter boards help to reduce the time from design and prototyping to final production."

Operating at a switching speed of 667kHz, the converter measures just 4mm x 4mm yet delivers up to 5A and 100W. The device houses inputs up to 27VDC and provides an extremely low operating power dissipation that allows the very low no-load power, which is an important specification for regulatory certification. Internal and external feedback resistor divider flexibility supports the custom design, while a momentary internal feedback path permits clean and well-controlled start-up operation until external USB port controllers can bias themselves and smoothly control the output voltage.

Typical applications for the board include USB-PD and QC2/3/4 DC-DC converters.