The world of modern power supply continues to change and evolve, demanding ever-more innovative designs to handle demanding applications. Today’s switch mode power supply (SMPS) power transformers and inductors must now be designed for power levels that have migrated well into the medium-to-high kilowatt range. Whether it’s for grid-level power conversion in wind energy, large-scale solar converters, hybrid vehicles, or industrial equipment drive trains, high frequency magnetics present unique challenges.
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For example, finding the right core material and creating a viable design that will work with the intended application while at the same time minimizing losses. Triad Magnetics is proud to engineer optimally-designed, custom high-frequency magnetics, and also offers thousands of part numbers that are standard right off the shelf to cover all your transformer, inductor, high frequency magnetics, and power supply needs.
Specifications and Applications
The challenge of designing the core for high frequency magnetics must not be underestimated. Choosing the right core material is one of the most basic, yet crucial challenges. The main issue here is that the volume of the core does not scale linearly with power levels. High power levels demand larger core volumes than lower power levels, and this challenge is independent of frequency.
Ferrites are an obvious choice because they result in less losses, but don’t often come in sizes adequate for delivering 10 kW power levels and higher. They also tend to be increasingly brittle the larger they get, which means they don’t work well in applications that involve lots of vibrations or shocks, such as industrial equipment or hybrid vehicles.
Materials other than ferrites tend to be more expensive and result in greater losses. Larger cores also can’t support higher power densities as well as smaller cores, resulting in lower gauss levels.
High Frequency Magnetics from Triad Magnetics
With the goal of providing an optimized design for our customer’s application, Triad’s engineers provide extensive custom design services with rapid design, prototyping, and testing from our U.S. Design Center located in Perris, CA – all backed by ISO 9001:2015 certification. Our engineers have the ability to design completely custom high frequency magnetics or modify an existing standard product to meet the needs of any application.
Triad magnetics has also engineered six core products in its Switch Mode/High Frequency Gate Drive Transformers line. They are designed for use in all high-frequency switching topologies in order to isolate the control circuitry from the line-connected switches.
Superior performance is achieved through interleaved windings that result in the lowest possible practical leakage inductance while turn ratios of 1:1 and 1:1.5 optimize coupling and enhance performance. Available with single or dual secondaries, these transformers are constructed of UL-rated (130ºC) materials and are easily standardized at operating frequencies of 200 kHz and beyond. This product line includes the following six items:
GDE25-1 with maximum DCR 1-2 and DCR Gate of 0.350 Ohm, minimum ET product of 540 VµSEC, maximum leakage of 2.5 µH and minimum inductance of 0.680 mH.
GDE25-2 with maximum DCR 1-2 of 0.350 Ohm, DCR Gate of 0.650 Ohm, minimum ET product of 540 VµSEC, maximum leakage of 2.5 µH, minimum inductance of 0.680 mH and an additional secondary winding.
GDE25-3 with maximum DCR 1-2 of 0.875 Ohm, DCR Gate of 0.350 Ohm, minimum ET product of 840 VµSEC, maximum leakage of 3.5 µH and minimum inductance of 1.5 mH.
GDE25-4 with maximum DCR 1-2 of 0.875 Ohm, DCR Gate of 0.650 Ohm, minimum ET product of 840 VµSEC, maximum leakage of 3.5 µH, minimum inductance of 1.5 mH and an additional secondary winding.
GDE25-5 with maximum DCR 1-2 of 0.350 Ohm, DCR Gate of 0.875 Ohm, minimum ET product of 540 VµSEC, maximum leakage of 3.5 µH and minimum inductance of 0.680 mH.
GDE25-6 with maximum DCR 1-2 of 0.350 Ohm, DCR Gate of 1.75 Ohm, minimum ET product of 540 VµSEC, maximum leakage of 3.5 µH, minimum inductance of 0.680 mH and an additional secondary winding
For all the above products, the drive to gate windings were hi-pot tested at 3,750 VRMS, ET should be de-rated by 32% for 50 kHz, 50% for 100 kHz and for unidirectional operation, and operation at rated current per winding renders an approximate 40°C rise in temperature.
Ready to tackle your custom high frequency magnetics challenges? Find out more about these Triad products by checking out our online catalog of high frequency magnetics.