In recent years, there is a growing trend towards electronification to meet the need to conserve energy in all areas, including the automotive market where attention has focused on 48V hybrid vehicle systems that take safety into account and provide better fuel economy than conventional 12V systems.

This is expected to increase the demand for DC/DC converters that can not only provide direct 3-5V output from 48V for driving control blocks and various functions, but are also capable of operating at high frequency (>2MHz) to prevent interference with AM radio bands and minimize the number of external components. To meet these market needs for high input, low output, and high switching frequency it is necessary to shorten the switching ON time.

Proprietary technology for controlling pulses in a very short time allowed ROHM to reduce the minimum ON time to an unprecedented 20ns – 6x shorter than conventional solutions – enabling stable step-down operation from 48V to 3.3V at a constant switching frequency of 2MHz.

In addition, current mode control provides easy phase compensation required for constant voltage output with fewer external parts, contributing to greater end-product miniaturization while reducing customer design load. And integrating ROHM's high voltage MOSFET expands the input voltage range to 65V, 4.6x higher than conventional products, ensuring compatibility with a wider range of applications.

Additional features include multiple protection circuits and AEC-Q100 qualification that support the stringent reliability demands in the automotive and industrial equipment sectors.