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Ultrathin Power Modules for Low Height Profile DC-DC Applications

This presentation highlights practical solutions for applications requiring ultrathin DC-DC requirements.  Featured are TDK's micro-POL power modules that offer 1.5mm height power modules with integrated thin-film inductors.   For instance, the FS1406 (210-8772), is a 6A / 15 Watt power module with an amazing 1.5-millimetre height.  New and emerging applications and system trends are driving the need for higher density power modules to meet demanding low height profiles.   

These applications needing low height profile design such as SoM, System on modules containing FPGA, SoC, ASICs and multi-ARM cores such as Xilinx, Intel / Altera, NXP QorIQ or i.Mx8, Nvidia Nano/Xavier and new 7nm ASICs.  Drones, Gigi-bit ports, robotics, sensors, AI and machine vision applications are other good examples looking for low profile height power solutions.  

Additional small form factor (SFF) application are pushing higher integration and board space constraints, including: PCIe, stacked board designs, VPX / VNX, ATCA, VME and similar high-density boards, mezzanine modules or stacked cards using a carrier and embedded processor configurations. 

Other trends such as enlarged heat sink areas where the hood height clearance near FPGA and power hunger processors is also pushing out POL design areas.  With low height profile DC-DC solutions, the TDK micro-POL devices can be placed underneath the heat sink, between IC chips, between mainboard and daughterboards and also underneath the PCB boards to taken advantage of areas for tight PCB board design and layouts.

TDK offers 3D step files for mechanical designers, as well as starter design schematics and layout files through Ultra Librian.  3D models are also available from Samacys.   These can be imported to DesignSpark PCB toolsets for a complete design.  In addition, these starter designs also provide important thermal design recommendations on PCB layout to deliver high power delivery.  

Tony Ochoa Faradaysemi, A TDK Group Company Tony Ochoa is the director of marketing at TDK, supporting mixed signal analog in both precision and power. He has over 30 years of industry experience, and has worked for Analog Devices, National Semiconductor, Infineon, and several other start-up in the Silicon Valley area. He holds a BSEE from the University of California and MBA. When not working on engineering, you will find him in the waves in Oceanside, California.
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