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Switcher Supply ICs Boost Power While Cutting Cost and Footprint

April 14, 2025

Power Integrations’s latest incarnation of its TinySwitch IC family enables development of compact, economical supplies up to 200 W that don’t compromise on performance or features.

Lee Goldberg

Related To:

Electronic Design

The recently released TinySwitch-5 series of switching ICs from Power Integrations leverages an application-optimized architecture to offer an economical, more compact solution for applications requiring up to 200 W. And they don’t compromise on performance.

Although the new IC family’s architecture omits PI’s proprietary (and quite excellent) FluxLink isolation technology in favor of a more basic diode rectification and optocoupler feedback circuit, it still manages to achieve up to 92% efficiency and a rich set of protection features. Equally important, the devices can serve as drop-in replacements in many designs using any earlier series of switches.

The controller features an advanced control engine that squeezes the most out of “vanilla” silicon MOSFET devices by managing both off time and switch current limit to keep the switch operating in its peak range and power delivery to maximize efficiency, even at light loads. As a result, supplies based on the TinySwitch-5 are able to meet the light-load power-consumption limit of 300 mW, set by the2009/125/EC Directive, while still delivering up to 220 mW of output power for display and other standby functions.

The TinySwitch-5 ICs’ enhanced thermal packages allow them to deliver up to 75 W without a heatsink.

Pricing for TinySwitch-5 starts at $0.35 for 10,000-unit quantities. Reference designs are available for a 12-W single-output power supply (DER-1017); a 26.5-W dual-output power supply with excellent standby efficiency (RDR-1016); a 36-W single-output power supply with high efficiency at light load (DER-1040); and a 1,200-W power supply with 92% efficiency at 230 V AC (DER-1027).

About the Author

Lee Goldberg | Contributing Editor

Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.

Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.

Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.

Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.

Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.