Articles and news - 2

Awhile back I published a simple design idea for a thermal airspeed sensor based on a self-heated Darlington transistor pair. The resulting sensor is simple, sensitive, and solid-state, but suffers from a radically nonlinear airspeed response...

A switching regulator converts an input voltage to a higher or lower output voltage. For this, an inductor is used to store energy temporarily...

This design for a photonic switch needs more than approximately 70 V at the cathode of a duo-lateral optical position-sensing device...

In developing electronic systems, designers look for products or ideas that may benefit from the better performance, smaller size, lower cost, and improved reliability that an IC can offer. Toward that end, the digital potentiometer emerged as an alternative to its mechanical counterpart, the mechanical potentiometer...

Capacitor type charge pumps are a well-known, simple, efficient, cost-effective method for inverting and multiplying voltage supply rails. Perhaps less well known, however, is that they also work just as well for dividing voltage...

The Power Integrations TOPSwitch family of integrated flyback-regulator ICs provides exceptional performance in small, low-pin-count packages. For the lowest-pin-count packages, the multifunction, or M, pin serves multiple purposes...

Wide bandgap power semiconductor devices like Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs are enjoying growing popularity in many modern power electronic applications like E-mobility and renewable energy. Their extremely fast switching speed capability helps to increase efficiency...

At the end of the DI for a Simple log-scale audio meter I promised to show how to upgrade it to work better...

As the latest generation of new LEDs achieves higher levels of power and efficiency, use of these devices extends to new areas, such as flashlights and vehicular applications...

When you include a power op amp, such as PA05 from Apex Microtechnology, in your design, it is desirable to minimize the supply-to-output differential to a minimum to reduce power dissipation and to fully exploit the amplifier's output range...