ISL8012/13/14 achieve up to 95% Efficiency with Fast Transient Response and Superior Loop Stability and Reduce BOM Costs in Battery-Powered, Computing, Industrial and General Purpose Designs

Intersil Corporation (NASDAQ Global Select: ISIL), a world leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance analog semiconductors, today introduced the ISL8012, ISL8013, and ISL8014. This family of monolithic synchronous step-down DC/DC regulators provides a compact, efficient power solution for a wide range of consumer, computer, industrial and instrumentation applications.

The ISL8012/13/14 perform high-efficiency DC/DC control and conversion while supporting a continuous load of 2A, 3A and 4A, respectively. The selectable operation mode between forced PWM mode and automatic PWM/PFM mode maximizes battery life in portable and handheld applications. The low quiescent current of 35μA to 40μA in a light-load/stand-by condition makes this regulator family ideal for battery powered and other “green power” applications. The supply voltage range of 2.7V to 5.5V allows the use of single Li+ cell, three NiMH cells or a 3V/5V input.

The ISL8013 and ISL8014 are pin-to-pin compatible, while the ISL8012 comes in a 25% smaller 3mm x 3mm 10-lead DFN package.

In addition to integrating a pair of low ON-resistance switching MOSFETs, the ISL8012/13/14 can be synchronized to an external clock (up to 4MHz) allowing use of smaller external components. These devices also feature internal current mode compensation to minimize the number of external components while enabling a fast transient response and high duty cycle/low drop-out operation. Inherent output voltage monitoring and power sequencing can be realized using features such as Power-On-Reset (POR), PGOOD (Power OK) and Enable (EN) to provide output voltage monitoring and power sequencing capabilities without the need of additional discrete ICs.

The ISL8012/13/14 also feature less than 1μA logic-controlled shutdown current, peak current limiting and hiccup mode short circuit protection for reliable operation under adverse conditions. External synchronization up to 4 MHz (for ISL8013 and ISL8014) reduces electromagnetic emissions between multiple rails on the system board.

The ISL8012/13/14 family is an ideal power solution for a wide range of applications such as digital cameras, media players, portable medical instruments, broad range of computing applications including servers, storage drives, KVM modules, industrial programmable logic controllers, data acquisition systems, etc.