DC-DC STEP-DOWN

CONVERTER OVERVIEW

Converting a higher DC voltage to a lower one is a common requirement

found in most electronic circuits. This might be something like converting
the 12V from a battery down to 5V in order to power an electronic
board. A portion of that 5V may be further converted down to 3.3V to
drive a lower voltage portion of the circuit.

For many years linear regulators where the standard for converting
higher DC voltages to lower DC voltages. They work well and are still
widely used today but they do have some limitations. The main one is
that a linear regulator converts the higher input voltage down to a lower
output voltage by dissipating the excess voltage as heat. This is
because the linear regulator uses a large power transistor which is
throttled back in order to drop the voltage on the output and so it is
basically acting like a large power resistor would to drop the voltage. As
with a power resistor, the more voltage it needs to drop given the same
amount of current, the more heat will be generated.

As an example, let's say you are using a typical 7805 style linear
regulator to drop 9V from a wall bug down to 5V to power a circuit that
will draw about 1A of current. The circuit will consume 5V * 1A = 5W of
power.
The power dissipation of the 7805 device used to power that circuit is
calculated as Power = (Vin - Vout) * Iout so in this case Power = (9V -
5V) * 1A = 4W. The 7805 device is dissipating (wasting) 4 watts of
energy to deliver 5 watts of energy to the circuit it is powering so
efficiency is not very good but it may be fine for the application.

Now if you instead need to run that same 7805 regulator off of a 15V
supply, the power dissipation is now (15V - 5V) * 1A = 10W so now you
are wasting 10 watts of energy to deliver 5 watts to the circuit. Not only
is there a lot of wasted energy, but getting rid of the excess heat being
generated by the small regulator IC can be problematic. Pretty soon you
are adding a heat sink and then a fan to cool the heat sink which
consumes more power and takes up more space. This wasted energy
becomes a bigger issue as products in general tend to get more
compact in size and more products are being battery operated where
poor efficiency means shorter battery life.

To help solve this issue, DC-DC step-down (also called 'buck')

converters came into existence. DC-DC step-down converters basically
take a higher input voltage and converts it to a lower output voltage by
chopping it up by rapidly switching the output power transistor on and off
so that the output essentially looks like a square wave and then using an
LC filter to smooth it back into a DC voltage on the output of the filter.

Power dissipation in a DC-DC converter tends to be more related to the

amount of current being supplied and less related to how much voltage
drop there is between the input and output of the device. The efficiency
of DC-DC converters is typically much better than the equivalent linear
regulator circuit.

Efficiency relates to how efficient the converter is at converting one

voltage to another. To calculate efficiency, you take the power being
delivered to the circuit and divide that by the power drawn from the
source and multiple that by 100 to get percentage. Efficiency = (Vout *
Iout) / (Vin + Iin) * 100.

An ideal converter running at 100% efficiency would lose no power in the

conversion. In our example above, it would be able to convert the 15V
while drawing 0.333A of current (5W) to the required 5V @ 1A (5W),
with no power lost in the conversion. Efficiency = (5 * 1) / (15 * 0.333) *
100 = 100%. Similarly if the conversion from 15V took 0.4A (6W) to 5V
@ 1A (5W), then the efficiency is (5 * 1) / (15 * 0.4) * 100 = 83%. A
converter can never hit 100% as some power is always lost in the
conversion process. Most converters run in the 70-95% range and can
get up as high as 97-98%.

The efficiency achieved depends on the circuit design and it will also
vary depending on the input/output voltages being used and the current
draw (load) being placed on the device. Typically the efficiency of at
DC-DC converter is stated as the theoretical maximum possibly of the
converter IC used (i.e. up to 95% efficient) even though they are seldom
operated under conditions to give that peak efficiency in actual use and
the overall design itself may not support achieving maximum
efficiency. It is more realistic when efficiency is given in a range which
might be closer to 75-95% efficient which gives you some idea that on
average you might get 85% efficiency out of it and not expect to get
95%.

The main downside to DC-DC converters compared to a linear regulator

is that the output will have some amount of AC voltage ripple riding on
the DC output. The amount of ripple depends on the quality of the
output filtering. Whether the ripple presents a concern depends on the
type of circuit that the converter is powering but in most cases can be
ignored.

The other thing to watch for with DC-DC converters is that they are
deceptively simple to design on paper, but difficult to physically
construct. There are also many design trade-offs that can be made to
reduce cost at the expense of performance. There is a lot of high
frequency energy in the circuit which requires careful component
selection and placement. The PCB requires careful layout and is
frequently acting as the main heat sinking device and this is often not
optimized in order to minimize board size. Lastly it is tempting to select
cheaper components to save costs or reduce physical size vs selecting
more expensive, often larger components to optimize performance.

Many manufactures of these DC-DC converters will just restate the

maximum possible performance of the main regulator IC that is used in
the design even though they have chosen to use parts in the design that
will not allow for that theoretical maximum operation for any length of
time. These devices often will still work fine for your application at a
nice low cost, but they need to be derated to ensure they will work to
your expectations which is why we evaluate any that we sell and publish
their true performance capabilities.
Below we cover some of the cost / performance trade-offs that are
frequently made with these devices and what to watch for.

Electrolytic Capacitors
The life of an electrolytic capacitor is primarily determined by its
operating temperature. Electrolytic capacitors lifetimes are rated while
operating at their maximum operating temperature (typically in the 105C
range) and maximum ripple current while also operating at their
maximum rated operating voltage. The life is typically stated as being in
the 1000-2000 hour range. That is not all that long for a device that is in
constant usage. 1000 hours is only about 42 days of constant use for
instance, but it might be acceptable for a circuit used for occasional
prototyping.

All other things being the same, for every 10°C decrease in operating
temperature of the electrolytic capacitor from its maximum spec, it's
operational lifetime will double. As you can imagine, it is important to
keep these caps from getting too hot if you want them to live very long.

The high energy circuits in a DC-DC converter are fairly hard on

electrolytic caps. They are low impedance circuits that often run at
relatively high voltages with a lot of ripple current and the components
need to be tightly packed together for proper electrical operation. These
circuits benefit from using capacitors with a lower ESR spec as this
minimizes the self-heating of the cap when used in these circuits. Low
ESR capacitors tend to have higher rated voltages which often have
larger package sizes and they generally cost more. Inexpensive
compact DC-DC converters typically do not use low ESR capacitors, so
the operating temperatures of the capacitors can get high enough to not
only shorten the life, but to also possibly cause hard failure of the
device. If the capacitors burn your finger, they are getting too hot and
power needs to be reduced.

The other obvious thing to watch for is the voltage rating. You
sometimes find DC-DC converts rated for something like 40V on the
input or output and yet the capacitors they are using are clearly marked
as being 35V rated capacitors. In those cases, the voltage has to be
kept within the operating range of the capacitors that are
installed. Capacitors on the input side of the board are often higher
rated than on the output side as the maximum input voltage will always
be higher than the maximum output voltage.
Inductors
Inductors are one of the less commonly used components so they tend
to be a bit of a mystery to many hobbyists, but they are fairly simple
devices that use wire wound in some fashion to provide the desired
inductance properties. Some are enclosed and look like small black
ceramic cans and others are visible loops of wire wound around a core
of some type. The bare wire is coated to prevent electrical shorting.

When used in DC-DC converters, the amount of inductance is generally

predetermined by the IC manufacture and it depends on the application
their IC is being used in. The DC-DC converter designers generally get
this right and value is frequently a compromise value such as when the
DC-DC converter has an adjustable output.

The current rating of the inductor is the other major property and it is
mainly determined by the size of the wire used in the inductor. Larger
wire takes up more room and costs more but can handle more
current. The DC-DC converter designers often go cheap on this part
and it ends up being marginally spec'd in order to save space and
cost. At higher current loads, smaller than optimum wire will start to heat
up due to the resistance of the wire and can get quite hot. Maximum
temperature specs on inductors, especially the smaller enclosed kind
are often in the 100°C range, so if the inductor is getting to the finger
burning stage, the current load on the DC-DC converter should be
reduced to avoid overheating this device.

Output Filtering
DC-DC converters are inherently electrically noisy devices. Its job is to
basically take a nice calm flat DC voltage and violently chop it up into
pieces and then smooth the pieces back out into a DC voltage again
using an output filter. That output filter consists primarily of the inductor
and capacitors in the output circuit and depends heavily on the board
layout to optimize the quality of the filter.

The portion of the AC energy from the chopping that went on that makes
it through the output filter is expressed in the terms of ripple and noise.

Ripple is typically a more or less triangular or sawtooth AC waveform

that rides on the top of the DC voltage that is being output. This
waveform will be at the switching frequency of the converter IC which is
most often in the 150KHz range but can go from 10's of kHz up to 1Mhz
or more.

Noise is the higher frequency components of the waverform that show

up as voltage spikes at the peaks of the ripple waveform and is primarily
created by the high energy switching transients of the IC converter and
diode used in the circuit and well as the characteristics of the output filter
circuit.

Converters can vary widely in the quality of this output filtering. Not
surprisingly, design tradeoffs to build a cheaper converter generally
means having more ripple and noise on the output. For instance, a
220uF electrolytic capacitor may be used on the output filter as per the
IC mfr spec, but if it is not a higher quality low ESR type, the output
ripple will be greater than it would otherwise be. A DC-DC Converter
used in a bench lab supply may have < 10mV ripple. A decent DC-DC
converter module may have 100mV and a lower quality DC-DC
converter module may have 500mV or more.

The scope capture below shows a what a typical output ripple looks. In
this case, the ripple is 336mV peak-peak riding on a 12VDC output. The
frequency is 150kHz which is the operating frequency of the converter
IC.

The scope capture below shows the output of a different DC-DC

converter which has about 65mV of ripple, but also shows typical noise
spikes at the peaks of the waveform that increases the total ripple and
noise to about 156mV peak-peak.
While ripple and noise seems concerning especially when it starts
getting fairly large, for most digital circuits, it does not cause any issues
as digital circuits do a pretty good job of ignoring that type of
noise. When working with some analog circuits such as an audio
amplifier, or some analog types of sensors that type of noise may
become more of a concern. It is possible to add a secondary LC filter
circuit to the output of the DC-DC converter if lower ripple and noise is
desired.

Converter IC Heat Sinking

The converter ICs are often soldered to the PCB ground plane in order
to provide a heat sink for the part especially for the smaller DC-DC
converters. Larger DC-DC converters often use TO-220 type package
which can be attached to large finned heat sinks and may use cooling
fans in larger systems. The heat sinking of this component more than
anything else usually determines the maximum current that the module
can provide.

Looking at a common part like the LM2596 which is used in many of the
smaller inexpensive DC-DC converters where the part is soldered to the
board, the recommended minimum heat sink size is to use 2 sq. inches
of 2 oz copper and up to 6sq. inches for optimum performance. Most of
these boards are not even 2 sq. inches in total size and are often made
with thinner 1 oz copper to save cost. It is not surprising that these
modules will typically overheat and thermally shutdown when the full
rated 3A of current is drawn from the IC.

Heat sinks can be applied to the IC to help with the thermal situation, but
these are typically fairly ineffective since the heat sink has to be
attached to the plastic body of the device since the metal tab is soldered
to the board and heat transfer is not very good even with forced air.
Putting all technical mumble-jumble speak aside, a reasonable validation
of the operating conditions of a DC-DC converter is the good old finger
test. How hot is the converter IC getting, how hot are the electrolytic
capacitors getting and how hot is the inductor getting. These will run
warm to pretty toasty under normal conditions. If they are getting to the
finger burning stage (90-100°C) things are getting too hot.

For short-term prototyping use, pushing the boundaries is usually not a

huge concern. Most will safely shutdown if you push them too hard. If
you are testing the boundaries, it is safest to sneak up on them
slowly. Some devices with thermal and over-current protection will still
fail if they are subjected to a sudden large over-current situation. If you
are putting these into long-term use where a failure would be
inconvenient, then you are going to want to give them an easier life. As
a rule-of-thumb, it is not unusual to need to derate these devices to
about half the rated maximum power to keep them in their happy zone
for ca long life.