The ISL81601EVAL1Z board has a wide input range (9 to 60V) and is suited to applications such as battery backup, USB Type-C power supplies and chargers, and redundant power supplies, according to RS, which also sees the underlying chip used in telecomms, battery-powered industrial equipment, automotive aftermarket, medical equipment, robots, drones, security and surveillance.

The ISL81601 is a current-mode controller. It uses has Renesas’s proprietary control algorithm to automatically switch between
buck and boost modes as necessary to maintain a steady output voltage with changing input voltages and dynamic external loads.

Four control loops are integrated regulate not only Vout, but also average Iout and Iin
for constant current control and Vin for reverse direction control. Cycle-by-cycle current limiting is available in both directions and at either the line or load end.


It also has external soft-start, enable and protection against under-voltage, over-voltage, over-current and over-temperature.

The chip needs four external mosfets to operate, and includes 20A drivers for their gates.

Chip operation is actually over 4.5 to 60V and it can output 0.8V to 60V. TO increase efficiency, the chip can be separately fed from a rail between 8V and 36V.

Peak efficiency is 99%, and switching is programmable across 100 to 600kHz.