Microsemi announces comprehensive solar technology portfolio

IRVINE, USA: Microsemi Corp., a leading provider of semiconductor technology aimed at building a smart, secure, connected world, announced the immediate availability of its solar technology portfolio.

Microsemi's products for renewable energy applications include SmartFusion and IGLOO FPGAs; analog, mixed signal devices such as bypass diodes/switches, MOSFETs, FREDs and IGBTs; DC-DC converters, and pulse width modulation (PWM) modules. The extensive portfolio enables the efficient, reliable and cost-sensitive implementation of the entire range of photovoltaic (PV) applications, including power harvesting, power management, power switching and power monitoring.

"As PV designers strive to keep up with the demands for continuous innovation while meeting the cost and performance pressures of the solar industry, access to the latest technology is vital," said Russ Garcia, Microsemi SoC Group GM and executive VP of Sales & Marketing. "The availability of Microsemi's comprehensive toolbox, from programmable devices and standard off-the-shelf parts to full custom ASICs, gives designers of photovoltaic applications a strategic partner that shares their technical and business goals."

Microsemi has decades of experience in delivering innovative and highly reliable devices coupled with long product lifecycle availability. Continued product development focuses on flexibility, security and cost effectiveness, and provides the growing community of PV application designers with everything they need to quickly take their designs to market.

Solar bypass diodes for power harvesting
The LX2400 IDEAL Solar Bypass Device with Microsemi's patented CoolRUN technology provides a bypass path in PV module applications. With the industry's lowest forward voltage drop, resulting in negligible heat generation and temperature rise during operation, the LX2400 is best in class for reliability and robustness, in applications that require currents on the order of 10 amps or more through a module's junction box.

At only 0.74 mm high, Microsemi's new Schottky Barrier PV bypass diodes are the thinnest in the world, allowing customers to integrate them under the glass, eliminating the need for junction boxes. Alternatively, the ultra thin dimensions can be used to shrink the size of the junction box. Designed specifically for solar panels, the SFDS series of 10 amp diodes are packaged with unique flexible copper leads that offer satellite-proven reliability.

Alongside the unique packages presented above, Microsemi also offers a wide range of Schottky bypass diodes in axial, surface mount and thru hole devices. The standard current range is 10 A to 18 A with voltages ranging from 20 V to 45 V, but the possibility to design and build custom devices up to 60 A and up to 200 V also exists.

SmartFusion and IGLOO FPGAs for power management and control
Microsemi's flash-based architecture utilized in SmartFusion mixed signal FPGAs and IGLOO low power FPGAs is ideal for helping inverter designers maximize efficiency and integration of board-level functionality into a smaller footprint. Functions and algorithms such as increased number of PWM state machines, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) and Power Factor Correction (PFC) can be partitioned in the embedded 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 or within logic gates to suit the individual design requirements.

IGBTs, MOSFETs, FREDs and DC-DC converters for power switching
The new 600 V CoolMOS C6 devices feature fifth-generation high voltage superjunction technology for extremely low conduction and switching losses, enabling the design of switching systems that offer new levels of efficiency and power density.

The new MOS 8 IGBT has been optimized for low frequency operation (10 KHz — 30 KHz), where conduction loss dominates overall system losses. The MOS 8 PT IGBT portfolio provides low conduction loss options at 2.0 V (600 V BR(CES)) and 2.5 V (900 V BR(CES)).

Microsemi also offers IGBTs, MOSFETs and FREDs in addition to other power semiconductor devices in a wide variety of power module electrical and mechanical configurations that facilitate the implementation of new and more efficient converter topologies such as three-level inverters, interleave PFC boost converters and matrix converters.

In addition, Microsemi's growing DC-to-DC product family supports up to 40 V input voltages across a wide range of current output, up to 40 amps. The family includes switching regulators with built-in power FETs as well as controllers that use external power FETs and can operate at frequencies up to 2 MHz.

FPGAs for power monitoring
SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGAs include an analog front-end, embedded ARM Cortex-M3 processor and programmable logic fabric in a single IC platform. This flexibility gives designers the ability to develop low power, adaptable platforms for accurate real-time load data monitoring while addressing a variety of secure connectivity protocols.