An electric bike, or e-bike, is a popular, eco-friendly option for daily commutes. These bicycles are equipped with an electric motor to assist users in pedaling. E-bikes have next-to-no running costs, requiring little maintenance. They also let riders avoid gasoline costs, vehicle traffic congestion, and parking fees.  Most users buy assembled models, but it’s also possible…

The design of future power-electronic systems is continuously pushed to improve state-of-the-art performance and power density. Supporting this trend, Infineon Technologies has launched a new Source-Down 3.3 x 3.3 mm² PQFN product family in the 25-150 V classes with Bottom-Side (BSC) and Dual-Side Cooling (DSC) variants. The new product family provides significant enhancements on the…

Following the successful launch of the HYC150 and HYC300 of their hypercharger product line, alpitronic recently introduced the state-of-the-art 50 kW DC electric-vehicle charger HYC50. It’s the first wall-mounted DC charger in this power range featuring two charging ports that allow fast-charging of one vehicle at 50 kW or of two vehicles simultaneously at 25…

Diodes Incorporated has announced that its ultra-high-power-density (UHPD) charger solution has won an award in the featured, “Energy-Saving Power Semiconductor Provider” category at the inaugural EE Awards Asia. The three-chip charger solution was originally developed to enhance performance in applications, such as notebook computer adapters and smartphone chargers. The EE Awards Asia celebrates the achievements…

STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor provider serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, is protecting wireless charging of small devices and mobiles with a convenient solution for authenticating certified Qi chargers. Wireless charging, enabled on an increasing variety of smartphones and wearables, is creating opportunities for innovations that offer extra value for users. These include…

Battery powered devices are all around us in daily life and we always face with low charge problems which lets us down in the middle of the day. Especially phones, music and video players, e-book readers etc. Sometimes we can’t find a mains source to plug an AC adapter or an USB port of a computer. In those cases, the battery powered USB travel charger comes to aid. It can be powered by two or three AA or AAA size batteries which you can find easily or carry with you while you are mobile. This article provides all the steps of the design and the manufacturing process of DIY Battery Powered USB Travel Charger project. We will draw the circuit, and PCB by using SoloPCB tools which are free and powerful to cover all our needs. When we finish the board, we will get the PCBs manufactured by Mass Design which has an ordering system integrated to SoloPCB. After receiving the bare boards, we will solder the components, power the circuit up and finally share the test & performance results. 

Latest mobile chargers are kind of power supply units that use the Switched Mode Power Supply (SMPS) technology. To understand the working phenomenon of a mobile charger, we need to understand the concept of Power Supply Unit (PSU). PSU is a device that transfers electrical energy from one end to another by changing its fundamental characteristics according to the requirements. Example of a PSU is an application that converts AC mains voltage to regulated DC voltage. PSUs can be of two types depending on the mode of operation – Linier and Switching. In these switching mode chargers, energy transfer is done by continuously switching electrical components (inductor, capacitor, etc) on and off. We can control the output voltage/current by varying the duty cycle, frequency or the corresponding phase.