Single-chip ISL95338 replaces two converters, enables USB PD3.0 bidirectional voltage regulation for tablets, ultrabooks and power banks
Intersil, a subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corporation announced the industry's first buck-boost voltage regulator for tablets, ultrabooks, power banks, and other mobile devices using the reversible USB Type-C™ connector. The ISL95338 bidirectional voltage regulator accepts input power from a wide range of DC power sources – AC/DC power adapters, USB power delivery (PD3.0) ports, travel adapters, power banks – and converts it to a regulated voltage up to 24 V. The ISL95338 can also convert a wide range of DC power sources to a regulated 20 V at its power adapter input. The ISL95338 supports the USB-C ecosystem with buck-mode, boost-mode, and buck-boost mode, and is flexible enough to use in any USB-C power management application.
The single-chip ISL95338 replaces two voltage converters currently used for bidirectional buck and boost modes to reduce a customer's bill of materials (BOM) cost by 50%. It leverages Intersil's patented R3™ modulation technology to deliver acoustic noise-free operation, superior light-load efficiency and ultra-fast transient response. Intersil's R3 extends battery life by combining the best features of fixed-frequency pulse width modulation (PWM) and hysteretic PWM to maximize power efficiency. The ISL95338 is also USB 3.1-compliant and provides serial communication through SMBus/I2C, allowing designers to program several input/output current and voltage slew rate settings to create a customized solution.
The ISL95338 is fully compliant to the USB PD3.0 standard and supports programmable power supply (PPS) fast charging with bidirectional 5 V to 20 V buck, boost or buck-boost modes. Multiple ISL95338 ICs can be combined with the ISL95521A combo battery charger or ISL9238 buck-boost battery charger to enable simultaneous multiport USB-C charging. The ISL95338 can also be used with the R9A02G011 USB PD controller and RAJ240045 fuel gauge IC for a complete USB-C power delivery solution.
Key Features and Specifications of ISL95338
- Provides bidirectional buck, boost, and buck-boost operation
- In forward mode, input voltage range is 3.8 V to 24 V and output voltage is up to 20 V with no dead zone
- Up to 1 MHz switching frequency, and automatically reduces switching frequency with no audible acoustic noise when charger is in DCM mode
- Programmable soft-start
- LDO output for VDD and VDDP
- System status alert function, and bidirectional internal discharge function
- Active switching for negative voltage transitions
- Bypass mode in both directions, forward mode enable and reverse mode enable
- Fast swap allows one port to quickly swap from source to sink
- Bidirectional internal input/output node discharge
- SMBus and auto-increment I2C compatible
- Full protection against undervoltage, overvoltage, overcurrent, and overtemperature
Pricing and Availability
The ISL95338 buck-boost voltage regulator is available now in a 4 mm × 4 mm TQFN package and is priced at $3.36 USD in 1k quantities.
