Adil Salman from Wolfspeed recently shot a video with us covering a silicon-carbide charging circuit demonstration. The charger used Wolfspeed SiC MOSFETs. It had two stages. One is a PFC (power factor correction) stage, the other is an LLC converter stage. If you were to try building a similar charger with silicon IGBTs, you would […]
SMPS chips that squelch EMI
We recently filmed a short video with Tony Armstrong from Analog Devices who took us through a demonstration of a new kind of circuitry that cuts down the noise from switching power supplies. Switchers are notoriously noisy but can usually be fixed with filtering. Armstrong illustrates that with a non-synchronous regulator running at about 300 […]
PC-based board tester finds PCB faults quickly
The ABI BoardMaster-RM Universal PCB Test system is housed in a convenient 19-in. rack case. It is an all-in-one unit featuring a comprehensive set of test instruments, complete with a built-in Windows 10 PC and special software for testing and fault-finding on almost any kind of PCB and assembly. Numerous valuable investigation methods are provided, […]
USB spectrum analyzer portfolio now includes 13 GHz and 18 GHz models
The RSA500 family of rugged, battery-powered USB-based spectrum analyzers now includes the RSA513A and RSA518A offering 13-GHz and 18-GHz frequency range respectively. Along with their higher frequency support, these instruments provide the ability to stream I & Q data for customers to perform analysis consistent with software-defined radio functionality. Delivering performance and functionality equal to […]
Simulating electric motors with MotorSolve software
We recently filmed a short video with Chad Ghalamzan from Infolytica, which is now part of Mentor Graphics, a Siemens business. Infolytica develops simulation software for magnetics as you might find in motors used in electric vehicles. Motorsolve is electric motor design software that allows an engineer to do virtual prototyping of their motor. It […]
Grid links get more compact thanks to gallium nitride
Serkan Dusmez from Texas Instruments recently recorded a short video with us on a gallium-nitride based grid link. It is a three-phase, three level bidirectional grid tight inverter developed jointly by Texas Instruments and Siemens. It includes 600-V GaN TI drivers that incorporate smart features like over voltage protection and over temperature protection in a […]
1,000 A to a welder through a MOSFET
Rehan Tahir from Infineon recently filmed a video with us covering a cool demonstration that develops a thousand amps for a welder. The point was to highlight an Infineon 1 kA board that actually targets applications powering the GPUs and next generation CPUs that will need a thousand amps or more. The demo uses Infineon […]
TI SiC MOSFET gate drivers make for smaller inverters
Nagarajan Sridhar from Texas Instruments recently filmed a video with us covering a demo of a solar panel inverter that uses Texas Instruments silicon carbide MOSFET gate drivers. He points out that the switching frequency of silicon carbide far exceeds the capability of that available through silicon IGBTs or MOSFETs. The demo circuit is a […]
How eGaN transistor technology improves Lidar performance
Alex Lidow from EPC recently filmed a video with us covering Lidar, a hot subject right now for autonomous vehicles. One of the biggest applications for eGaN is driving these lasers. The reason is that automakers want to see a long distance with a high degree of accuracy. To do that, the laser in a […]
Graphics-intensive apps get more juice from GaN dc/dc converters
Alex Lidow from EPC recently did a short video with us covering a brand new GaN-based DC-DC converter that’s super small and efficient. Lidow says EPC has been working to improve GaN-based dc/dc conversion for about eight years. They had to overcome a lot of barriers to do so because when they first started, there […]