There are 3 Things Your Boss Wanted to Know About Voltage Regulator.
#1 DC DC Converter & Voltage Regulator
DC DC converter is a DC converter, because the DC can not change the voltage through the transformer, the DC voltage through the oscillation into AC voltage, and then through the transformer or chopper to increase or decrease the voltage, and then filtered into the required voltage The And voltage regulator refers to the voltage regulator or regulator, the general can only be reduced voltage, and can not be raised, such as LM78XX three-terminal regulator IC is such a class. If it is a pure DC regulator, there can be no regulator diode, but like LM78XX such regulators, there are voltage regulator diode or similar voltage stabilized circuit, as the output voltage comparison benchmark.
#2 Regulator and Non-regulator
For DC-DC power supply module, some regulator output, some non-regulated output, what is the difference between regulator and non-regulator ?
According to the designer ‘s circuit with different efficiency, the effect is different; and the regulator output, is the output voltage stays at a certain value in the device; as for the non-regulator, is based on input changes then changes, it’s flexible.
The one is fixed, the other is adjustable.
Or we can say, regulator output is how much you input, and get a fixed output value, non-regulated will change with the input changes.
#3 The Difference Between Switch Regulator and Linear Regulator
The main benefit of the switch mode is efficiency (Po / Pi) promotion, and can be boost, buck, boost-buck, and the linear regulator efficient is less than the switch regulator, due to the output voltage is lower than the input voltage. Current Power supply demand high power (etc. 200W) are using switch. And small current (mA) is more commonly use with the regulator.
More information:
Switching regulator need to add inductance, resistance and capacitance, if need to provide more 500mA situation, use external Power MOSFET is reasonable.
If it is linear regulator, general speaking, mostly designed on-chip build-in, and supplied the current will not exceed 100mA, if big current needed, the POWER MOSFET Size will be large, and there will be the problem of current density, if use linear regulator and requires the more than 100mA , most of engineers use external BJT.