铮?/div>
between the output capacitors and sense resistors.
For a standard 300kHz application, the ESR zero frequen-
cy must be well below 95kHz, preferably below 50kHz.
Tantalum, Sanyo POSCAP, and Panasonic SP capacitors
in widespread use at the time of publication have typical
ESR zero frequencies below 50kHz. For example, the
ESR needed to support a 30mV
P-P
ripple in a 40A design
is 30mV/(40A
脳
0.3) = 2.5m鈩? Four 330碌F/2.5V Panasonic
SP (type XR) capacitors in parallel provide 2.5m鈩?(max)
ESR. Their typical combined ESR results in a zero at
40kHz.
Ceramic capacitors have a high ESR zero frequency,
but applications with significant voltage positioning can
take advantage of their size and low ESR. Do not put
high-value ceramic capacitors directly across the out-
put without verifying that the circuit contains enough
voltage positioning and series PC board resistance to
ensure stability. When only using ceramic output
capacitors, output overshoot (V
SOAR
) typically deter-
mines the minimum output capacitance requirement.
Their relatively low capacitance value can cause output
overshoot when stepping from full-load to no-load con-
ditions, unless a small inductor value is used (high
switching frequency) to minimize the energy transferred
from inductor to capacitor during load-step recovery.
The efficiency penalty for operating at 550kHz is about
5% when compared to the 300kHz circuit, primarily due
to the high-side MOSFET switching losses.
Unstable operation manifests itself in two related but
distinctly different ways: double-pulsing and feedback
loop instability. Double-pulsing occurs due to noise on
the output or because the ESR is so low that there is
not enough voltage ramp in the output voltage signal.
This 鈥渇ools鈥?the error comparator into triggering a new
cycle immediately after the minimum off-time period
has expired. Double-pulsing is more annoying than
harmful, resulting in nothing worse than increased out-
put ripple. However, it can indicate the possible pres-
ence of loop instability due to insufficient ESR. Loop
instability can result in oscillations at the output after
line or load steps. Such perturbations are usually
damped, but can cause the output voltage to rise
above or fall below the tolerance limits.
The easiest method for checking stability is to apply a
very fast zero-to-max load transient and carefully
observe the output voltage ripple envelope for over-
shoot and ringing. It can help to simultaneously monitor
the inductor current with an AC current probe. Do not
allow more than one cycle of ringing after the initial
step-response under/overshoot.
MAX1519/MAX1545
where
畏
TOTAL
is the total number of active phases,
畏
SLAVE
is the total number of slave phases (triggered
phases), f
SW
is the switching frequency per phase, and
t
TRIG
is the trigger delay between the master鈥檚 DH ris-
ing edge and the slave鈥檚 DH rising edge. The trigger
delay must be less than 1/(f
SW
脳 畏
TOTAL
) for stable
operation. The actual capacitance value required
relates to the physical size needed to achieve low ESR,
as well as to the chemistry of the capacitor technology.
Thus, the capacitor is usually selected by ESR and volt-
age rating rather than by capacitance value (this is true
of polymer types).
When using low-capacity ceramic filter capacitors,
capacitor size is usually determined by the capacity
needed to prevent V
SAG
and V
SOAR
from causing
problems during load transients. Generally, once
enough capacitance is added to meet the overshoot
requirement, undershoot at the rising load edge is no
longer a problem (see the V
SAG
and V
SOAR
equations
in the
Transient Response
section).
Output Capacitor Stability Considerations
For Quick-PWM controllers, stability is determined by
the value of the ESR zero relative to the switching fre-
quency. The boundary of instability is given by the fol-
lowing equation:
f
ESR
鈮?/div>
where:
f
ESR
=
and:
R
EFF
=
R
ESR
+
A
VPS
R
SENSE
+
R
PCB
where C
OUT
is the total output capacitance, R
ESR
is the
total equivalent-series resistance, R
SENSE
is the cur-
rent-sense resistance, A
VPS
is the voltage-positioning
gain, and R
PCB
is the parasitic board resistance
1
2蟺R
EFF
C
OUT
f
SW
蟺
______________________________________________________________________________________
33
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