DC1964A: 2A Bi-Directional DC/DC and SuperCap Charger/Balancer

DC1964A is a 2A, bidirectional buckboost DC/DC regulator and charger/balancer, featuring the LTC®3110 boost controller. Its wide voltage range both in capacitor/battery charger mode and in system backup mode makes it well suited to a wide variety of applications using supercapacitors and batteries.

The main features of this board include a wide capacitor voltage range from 0.1V to 5.5V, when the controller works as a backup, buck-boost converter. The input voltage range is also wide, 1.8V to 5.25V, when the controller works as a charger. LTC3110 also features automatic switching from charge to backup mode, programmable ±2% accurate charge current, automatic capacitor balancing, Burst Mode® operation, multipurpose comparator, and open-collector outputs to indicate direction of operation and end of charge.

The 1.2MHz constant-frequency operation results in a small and efficient circuit. In backup mode LTC3110 provides high output voltage accuracy over a wide load range with no minimum load requirement.

DC1964A features two modes of operation: automatic and external direction control. In the automatic mode of operation, DC1964 automatically charges the supercapacitor when a system voltage is present and works as a DC/DC converter providing system backup power to the load when system power is removed. In the external direction mode, users have control over charging and discharging the supercapacitor by changing logic on the EXT/DIR terminal.

The DC1964A supports three levels of input current limits—0.5A, 1A, 2A—while charging the supercapacitor. The DC1964A has a small circuit footprint. It is a high performance and cost effective solution for supercap, battery backup converters and chargers, servers, RAID and RF systems.