DC-DC power supplies

DC-DC converters convert one stable DC voltage to another and provide galvanic isolation between two circuits. Point of load regulators (PoL) are placed near the load and come in very small form factors whilst higher power non-isolated converters are used to efficiently perform the final voltage conversion.

Whilst each solution simply manages the conversion from a DC input to a regulated and/or isolated DC output, there are a wide range of options based on size, power, cost and converter technology requirements.

Avnet Abacus Europe-wide team of power specialists can guide you through issues of efficiency, heat dissipation, isolation and voltage regulation and help you choose the most appropriate model for your requirement. Common considerations include:

• Low power, isolated DC/DC converters – used to step-up or stepdown, to a desired other (regulated) voltage, but also to galvanically separate circuits for safety reasons.
• High and medium power DC/DC – a distributed power architecture (DPA) for boards and systems that is often used to break power conversion into several sections to control and manage the power train.
• Medical applications which need isolation from AC mains power – in general, an AC power supply will require isolation from the mains and rectification to a distributed bus voltage, at 48V, 24V or even down to 5V or 12V. A DC/DC converter can bring in extra safety with a high isolation; particularly for medical applications with electrical contacts to patients.
• Board mounted, isolated, intermediate bus converters (IBC) – isolate application boards from the 48V distributed bus and bring the bus voltage down to 8V to 14V at a typical 10% load regulation.
• Point of Load (PoL) regulators – convert the intermediate bus voltage to high precision, high efficiency, fast responding voltages with high current capabilities. The new ultra small micro-PoL generations create the board-space required for power-hungry ICs demanding multiple voltage rails like FPGAs, SoC and multi-core CPUs.