FL77944 LED Direct AC Drive Solution Launch
Superior Reliability, Performance, and Space Advantages Over Multi-Component Products

Fairchild has announced the new FL77944, the first solution in its LED Direct AC Drive product family, a solid-state LED lighting solution.

Manufacturers can now easily scale power and create smart, scalable LED-based lighting products that are smaller, deliver stronger performance, and offer longer usable life compared to products using switch mode power supply (SMPS) approaches.

Gaurang Shah, Executive Vice President of Fairchild's Power Systems Business Division, stated that "our FL77944 LED Direct AC Drive is a superior solution for solid-state LED lighting systems compared to expensive light engines based on SMPS technology," and "the FL77944 is a cost-effective integrated circuit equipped with everything needed to create smart LED lighting products that enable manufacturers to focus on shortening time-to-market and differentiating features, rather than wasting precious time integrating disparate components."


The FL77944's advantages include all essential dimming functions required for smart lighting products, such as phase-cut dimming and PWM dimming, which are key to analog and wireless connected lighting, and it can support high-power applications up to 120W through parallel connection. This allows manufacturers to reduce the number of multiple ICs they need to maintain.

Additionally, with the FL77944, electrolytic capacitors, transformers, and inductance coils are not required. This reduces BOM costs compared to SMPS-based designs and lowers overall complexity.

Board space savings are also an advantage. The FL77944 allows the controller IC to be placed on the same PCB as the LED, and since electrolytic capacitors, transformers, and inductance coils are not needed, board space requirements can be reduced. Particularly because there are inherently fewer points where failures can occur, reliability and lifespan are superior to SMPS-based products. Since electrolytic capacitors are a common failure point in SMPS systems, the ability to eliminate them clearly represents an improvement in reliability.