with Henry Zhang, Applications Engineering Manager - Power Products

Many applications such as battery-powered supply have a wide input voltage that can be lower or higher than the regulated output voltage. The conventional solutions, such as flyback, Sepic or a 2-stage supply are usually complicated and inefficient.

The single-stage buck-boost converter only needs a small size inductor with good efficiency. With the LTC3780, the synchronous buck-boost converter can offer an impressive 8% to 10% efficiency gain over a typical flyback or Sepic solution. Furthermore, the 4-switch synchronous buck-boost converter can be integrated in a very small 15mm x 15mm x 3mm, 60W, LTM4605/7/9 power module with a single external inductor. With current mode control, the LTM460x modules can be easily paralleled for more current and power with good current sharing and thermal balance.