New buck/boost converter maintains industry's lowest Iq while integrating supercapacitor charging

Texas Instruments introduced a new bidirectional buck/boost converter with an ultra-low quiescent current (Iq) of 60 nA – one-third the Iq of competing boost converters.

The TPS61094 buck/boost converter integrates a buck mode for supercapacitor charging while providing ultra-low Iq, enabling engineers to extend battery life by as much as 20% when compared to commonly used hybrid-layer capacitors (HLCs). Supercapacitor charging and discharging helps support peak loads and backup power, which are important for continuous operation in battery-powered industrial applications such as smart meters, smoke detectors and video doorbells, as well as medical applications.

Engineers designing battery-operated systems frequently face a common design challenge: a need to achieve high efficiency at no- or light-load conditions, in the low milliampere or microampere range. This requires power supplies to regulate their output while maintaining ultra-low supply current in the nanoampere range. The TPS61094 combines two key benefits that previously were trade-offs, the design simplicity of using an integrated buck/boost converter and the extended battery life enabled by high output current and low Iq (more info).