Applications that can benefit from the new charge pumps’ space savings and power efficiency include pagers, toys, medical and measurement instruments, metering equipment, and a variety of other battery-powered systems.
Ideal for use with low-power microcontrollers, the TPS6030x family of single-cell charge pumps provides a regulated 3.0- or 3.3-volt (V) output at up to 20 milliamps (mA) from a single NiMH, NiCd or alkaline battery. The charge pumps convert input voltages ranging from 0.9- to 1.8-V at either a 3x or 4x rate, depending on the input level. This flexible conversion rate, an industry unique feature for these devices, compensates for the lower voltage level in a partially discharged battery, enabling more efficient power usage throughout the discharge life of the battery. The new switched-cap converters also enable designers to use smaller external capacitors, allowing them to further reduce board space and component costs.
TI’s new TPS6030x DC/DC converters offer the industry’s smallest and most efficient charge pump solutions for small-profile, single-cell portable electronic systems, said Guenter Sporer, power management systems manager, TI. Developers now have one more excellent reason to turn to TI for a wide selection of power supply solutions for portable applications.
High Integration and Advanced Features
The TPS6030x single-cell devices feature greater integration and more advanced features than competing solutions, allowing designers to save precious board space while extending the useful life of the battery in portable systems. The devices include a newly developed LinSkip mode that enables the power supplies to achieve an efficiency of up to 90 percent over a wide load range. This new technology (patent pending) also allows designers to use small 1-microfarad (uF) capacitors, and provides a typical output voltage ripple of 30mVpp at an output current of 20mA. This is a reduction of 40 percent at twice the output current when compared to similar devices found on the market today. Under light loads, the charge pump automatically switches from low-noise, constant-frequency linear regulation to a power-saving pulse-skip mode.
Load isolation disables current flow to the system during shutdown, providing longer shelf and standby times for the battery. Operating efficiency is increased with a low quiescent current of less than 35 microamps (uA) during operation and less than 500 nanoamps (nA) during shutdown. These devices also include an integrated Power Good function to eliminate the need for an external supervisor. The device only requires five small 1-uF capacitors to help simplify the design and save up to 25 percent in board space for the total solution. In addition, the device does not require an inductor so electromagnetic interference (EMI) is minimized.
