Texas Instruments rolled out its latest line of buck-boost converters that deliver up to 2.5 A and enable up to 25% smaller power supply solutions in industrial and consumer Internet of Things devices. The chips are designed to consume standby current in the range of 11- to 15-µA, boosting the battery life of gadgets ranging from portable point-of-sale devices to wireless headphones.
The chips—the TPS63802, TPS63805, TPS63806 and TPS63810—can be used in solutions ranging from 19.5 mm2 to 25 mm2. The parts themselves are trapped inside compact packages and can be surrounded by smaller passive components. The parts can alternate between buck, buck-boost or boost modes and can handle wide 1.3-V to 5.5-V input voltage and 1.8-V to 5.2-V output voltage ranges, Texas Instruments said.
The TPS63802 and TPS63805 are 2-A buck-boost converters for industrial Internet of Things devices with limited battery life, ranging from sensors slapped on factory floors to smart meters plugged into buildings, which tend to operate for short amounts of time—for instance, to send data from the factory floor to the cloud. The TPS63806 and TPS63810 are 2.5-A components to be used in smartphones or wireless headphones.
Texas Instruments, the world's largest player in analog semiconductors, back in July introduced the TPS62840, a buck converter capable of operating on 60 nA of standby current. The company claims current draw is 33% lower than the part's closest competition. By wasting less standby current, the product can cut the system's battery count by 50%, which means its customers to employ smaller batteries, Texas Instruments said.
The TPS63805, TPS63806 and TPS63810 are slipped inside 1.4-mm-by-2.3-mm packages and cost $0.98, $1.05 and $1.09 each in 1,000-unit quantities, respectively. The TPS63802, which is shipping inside a 2-mm-by-3-mm QFN package, is priced at 98 cents per chip in 1,000-unit orders. The TPS63802 and TPS63810 are in currently in pre-production, while the TPS63805 and TPS63806 have started shipping to customers.