It’s time to ring in a new year, and so we wanted to pick a final NPI (video) for a year that’s been maybe a little lower than most to help us transition to a year that we hope will be a lot higher – that’s right, it’s the new TPS63900 buck-boost converter from Texas Instruments.

TI has been killing it lately with some really great power management IC’s – they always hit that sweet spot of competitive pricing, compact packages, easy-to-use designs and simple implementation. We use TI TPS-series buck/boost chips almost exclusively for that reason!

This chip is super compact, with all the transistors integrated inside, so you only need one inductor, three resistors, and an input + output capacitor set to get a solid voltage out, from a variety of inputs.

Your input and output range is from 1.8 to 5.5V, we think most folks will be using this to generate a solid 3.3V output from a few alkaline batteries, or one LiPoly. Rechargeable batteries can range from 2.7V at the end of their charge life to 4.2V when fully charged, so you really need a chip that can handle voltages both below and above the target output.

We like some of the fancy extras that got sprinkled on. For example, ultra-low quiescent current, which is usually one of the downsides of a switching converter compared to an LDO. This one is a super low 75nA. Also, you can switch between two voltages, say if you want to have a microcontroller that does some sensing but only sends out wireless data packets once in a while, you can run the microcontroller and sensors at 2V, then when ready to transmit, switch up to 3.3V seamlessly, and back down. A GPIO handles the switching, so you don’t have to do some weirdness with low-side transistors and voltage dividers (it’s also glitch-less).

There’s a great TI webinar that goes through all this chip can do in a lot of detail.

Texas Instruments’ TPS63900 device is a high-efficiency synchronous buck-boost converter with an extremely low quiescent current of 75 nA (typ.). The device has 32 user-programmable output voltage settings from 1.8 V to 5 V. A dynamic voltage-scaling feature lets applications switch between two output voltages during operation; for example, to save power by using a lower system supply voltage during standby operation. With its wide supply voltage range and programmable input current limit (1 mA to 100 mA and unlimited), the device is ideal for use with a wide range of primary such as 3S Alkaline, 1S Li-MnO2 or 1S Li-SOCl2, and secondary battery types. The high-output current capability supports commonly-used RF standards including sub-1 GHz, BLE, LoRa, wM-Bus, and NB-IoT.

Start your next year off right with a resolution to get the most out of your batteries with a TI TPS63900 buck-boost chip and eval board. Digi-Key has a bunch of the TPS63900 in stock right now for immediate delivery, so you can add this cute little power manager into your next design by tomorrow morning!

See this at Digi-Key short URL https://www.digikey.com/short/4c8hvr

Catch TI on Twitter https://twitter.com/TXInstruments

Manufacturer video: https://youtu.be/81MRCPjhGoc