
11
RD-0608
www.irf.com
L
1
and C
OUT
need to be chosen so that it stores enough energy to supply the load during t
HO,on
while
maintaining current control accuracy. A lower value of L
1
will require a larger value of C
OUT
.
Since this evaluation board is designed to handle a load current only as high as 1.5 A, off the shelf
inductors are available. Instead, to minimize or eliminate any effects of eddy currents, a custom
inductor for this application was designed by VOGT. High value (in the order of 1 mH or more)
inductors that can handle this amount of current are not readily available and tend to be bulky and
costly. With too small of an inductor (in the order of 100 μH or less), the C
OUT
capacitor would need
to be in the order of hundreds of micro farads to maintain good current regulation. Additionally, with a
smaller inductance, the ripple current seen by the capacitor would be quite large, shortening the life of
the capacitor, if an electrolytic were used.
Because of these considerations an inductor of 470 μH and an output capacitance of 33 μF were
chosen to accommodate the 1.5 A load current. The current ripple associated with 470 μH is relatively
small, so the board can be operated with or without output capacitance at the lower current ratings.
5.
FET vs. diode for the low-side switch
The IRS254(0,1) has been designed so that it can drive a low-side FET and a high-side FET. If the use
of two FETs for the half-bridge proves to be a cost issue, the low-side FET can be replaced by a
freewheeling diode as shown in Fig. 16. Of course this may yield a lower cost system, but there are
some efficiency tradeoffs to be considered, particularly for higher load currents. The system efficiency
is directly influenced by several system parameters including operating frequency, load current, and
input voltage.
A major parameter to consider is the reverse recovery time of the diode in comparison to the body
diode of the FET it replaces. The diode intrinsically has a much shorter reverse recovery time since the
device is specifically designed for this, where as the body diode is a parasitic element that originates
from basic processing technology and typically has inferior characteristics, in terms of forward drop,
reverse recovery, and power handling capabilities.
Fig. 16: Alternate IRS254(0,1) Time-Delayed Hysteretic Controlled Evaluation Board Schematic
Note: R
out
is needed only in few applications