Onsemi's NCP1680, from a leader in intelligent power and sensing technology, has been recognized as the best power electronics product.

Onsemi announced on the 15th that its NCP1680 CrM (Critical Conduction Mode) bridgeless totem pole power factor correction (PFC) controller recently won the 'PowerBest' award presented by Electronic Design.

The 2021 Power Best Awards is an award that celebrates a select few power electronic products and their developers that supported engineers' excellent designs throughout 2021.

The ON Semi NCP1680 won an award for uniquely implementing bridgeless totem-pole PFC using a mixed-signal controller, enabling designers to improve efficiency and reduce the cost and design complexity of high-performance power supplies. The controller is suitable for ultra-high-density offline power supplies operating on general-purpose mains (90-265 Vac) at power levels up to 350 W.

The bridgeless totem pole PFC topology significantly improves power stage efficiency by eliminating the diode bridge, which causes about 4W of loss (equivalent to about 20% of the total loss) at the input of the conventional PFC circuit used in 240W power supplies. The NCP1680 provides control signals for high-speed switching legs driven at pulse width modulation (PWM) switching frequencies and auxiliary legs operating at AC line frequencies. The controller can be used with almost any switching device, ranging from conventional super junction silicon MOSFETs to wide-bandgap devices based on silicon carbide (SiC) or gallium nitride (GaN) transistors.

The NCP1680 simplifies bridgeless totem-pole PFC designs using a new current limiting architecture and a line phase detection mechanism. The control loop supports an always-on CrM architecture with valley switching. To meet global efficiency standards for light-load operation today, it operates in valley-synchronized turn-on and discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) during frequency foldback operation.

Implementing a fully functional totem pole PFC requires only a few simple external components, thus reducing space and component costs. Cycle-by-cycle current limiting, which eliminates the need for Hall effect sensors, is implemented while further reducing the number of components.

The NCP1680, housed in an SOIC-16 package, is also available as part of an evaluation platform for rapidly developing and debugging advanced totem-pole PFC designs.