/r/nicechips

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Post your favorite old and new chips and components. They should be above average in some way, unusual or just plain nice to use.

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Post your favourite old and new chips and components. They should be above average in some way, unusual or just plain nice to use. Post parts that are:

  • Higher performance (speed, noise, gain, stability, losses and so on) than similar parts, or,
  • Cheap, reliable and easy to get hold of, or,
  • Flexible and multiple purpose, or,
  • Well documented or with above ordinary tools, or,
  • Easy to use, or requiring few external parts, or having relaxed requirements (for example, an LDO with very liberal requirements on output capacitors), or,
  • Have a feature or some function that very few other parts do.

The above list isn't exhaustive. Feel free to post about parts that are otherwise interesting, useful or notable.

Parts should be available to buy (e.g. listed on one of the findchips.com or octapart.com listed manufacturers as in stock) and reasonably priced (e.g. no $300 7805's ;).

Preference should be given to linking to the chip's main page on the vendor's site, with any links to development boards and other resources in a comment.

/r/nicechips

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2

Oldie but goodie: the CA3140 operational amplifier

MOS input so the bias current is negligible in most applications, works down to ground so good in single supply applications, and because its internal output node is brought out on the "strobe" pin its maximum positive output can be restricted which is useful in some control circuits.

2 Comments
2024/10/30
08:58 UTC

1

Help Needed: Using EVAL-ADL5960 Evaluation Board as a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA)

Hi, I have the EVAL-ADL5960 Evaluation Board, which is the vector network analyzer front end for the ADL5960. I want to use it as a vector network analyzer, but I'm not sure where to start. The ADI getting started guide didn’t provide much information on how to use the board as a VNA.

If anyone has experience with this evaluation board or knows how to set it up as a VNA, your guidance would be greatly appreciated.

7 Comments
2024/10/26
04:34 UTC

2

Looking for a raised usbc/usba port that's actually usb3

Basically I'm looking for this part https://www.molex.com/en-us/products/part-detail/2171800001 but this is only usb2. I need it in usb 3.2, and I also need a similar usba part.

6 Comments
2024/08/11
01:32 UTC

6

Looking for the most thermally efficient MOSFET, help!

Building a power distribution board for an automotive project -- 12V and up to 30A . Needed a preferably high-availability MOSFET (both N and P, can be different manufacturers/product lines) that is the most thermally efficient (low C/W rating) possible.

I want to minimize any passive/active cooling that I would have to provide my board.

If a smaller current rating MOSFET is available, please do share those as well -- I'd stack em up in parallel.

If yall know of any interesting part#'s accordingly, please let me know, thank you!!

18 Comments
2024/03/06
08:25 UTC

10

LM5112MY Tiny 7-A MOSFET Gate Driver

Not particularly new and going by the datasheet it isn't particularly exciting but...

The performance data given extends up to 1MHz, but subject to some limitations the part will function at 40MHz, possibly higher. It has a long track record at 27.12MHz. This means that by pairing it with a modest RF FET you can go from CMOS logic to 10+ Watts of RF in practically one stage.

The obvious limitation is gate capacitance, so far the highest I've used it with at that kind of frequency is about 50pF.

The gate resistor appears mandatory in my experience. I normally use 10 ohms, but I haven't had to optimise it so lower values might be preferable.

There is some assymetry between rise and fall times, which means it may shrink or stretch pulses depending on which input is used. YMMV.

The input needs to be a really good square pulse to the extent that it benefits from an extra logic gate to drive the driver. Unlike the discontinued IXRFD630 gate driver it doesn't appear to require a damping resistor on its own input though, possibly because having an input reference terminal gives it some resistance to ground bounce.

https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm5112.pdf

1 Comment
2024/01/24
19:21 UTC

2

NXP BGA3131 DOCSIS 3.1 upstream amplifier

So the intended application is very specific but if you ignore that and transformer-match it to 50 ohms you get a RF amplifier with a gain of at least 37dB, able to produce at least 0.5W and with the option to dial the gain back using its programmable attenuator function.

On the downside it is a bit of a "burner" dissipating 3W in a 5x5mm package. I've just about got one to work on an IC adaptor by soldering a brass post to the bottom of the adaptor and screwing on a heat-sink. Getting an RF IC to work without a PCB is another story but the terminals of the adaptor line up nicely with the terminals of the matching transformers.

Anyway here's the improved stripboard version after the terminals broke off of the original lash-up.

https://preview.redd.it/4phx5hfdslmd1.jpg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51eb04de0b906e4fcccf8a3beb25000d6d4efc4e

2 Comments
2023/12/14
20:37 UTC

11

TPL5110: Nano-powered system timer with MOS driver and manual MOSFET power ON

I learned about this chip after discovering that the RP2030 lowest current consumption is around 180-250uA in Deep Sleep mode which is a bummer for such a nice MCU. As a compromise TPL5110 allows for an external timed switch with 20nA consumption when it's in the dormant state.

https://www.ti.com/product/TPL5110

0 Comments
2023/11/22
10:25 UTC

8

TI's OPA323 family of opamps lacking clamp diodes from inputs to positive supply

https://www.ti.com/product/OPA4323

This is a fairly ordinary CMOS opamp: supply voltage 1.7V to 5.5V, RRIO, no input crossover, etc. It has higher than normal output drive. The feature that interests me is that it lacks ESD clamp diodes between the inputs and the positive supply. This is an unusual feature; most CMOS opamps have clamp diodes to both supply rails.

Unlike the few other modern opamps that also lack these diodes such as Microchip's MCP6001 (see note), etc. this opamp from TI has abs max ratings that allow the input voltage to be up to +6V [wrt ground] even when the supply voltage is at 0V. The datasheet has an explicit statement that this condition is allowed.

Note: The MCP6001 datasheet has a statement that even though the clamp diodes are absent, the application circuit should not apply input voltages outside the supply rails. They recommend adding external protection diodes for this.
I've been testing one of these (actually an MCP6002) this year. After about 9 months of having +3.6V on its noninverting input with a supply voltage of zero, the opamp still functions and the parameters that I'm measuring as a proxy for internal damage (input offset voltage, input bias current) are still well within spec.

5 Comments
2023/10/28
05:19 UTC

18

LT8714 an unusual DC-DC converter with "four quadrant" output

Not a new one here, but interesting all the same. The first example is a voltage-programmable converter with an output swing of -5V to +5V from a single positive input. The output is also able to source and sink current.

The datasheet gives some other examples including a current source/sink circuit using another amplifier to sense the current.

5 Comments
2023/05/29
14:40 UTC

47

Sub $0.1 Cortex-M0+ - PY32 series from Puya

https://jaycarlson.net/2023/02/04/the-cheapest-flash-microcontroller-you-can-buy-is-actually-an-arm-cortex-m0/

This is actually cheaper than even the recently posted WCH micro and the parts seem like improved variants of STM32F030 series (but not compatible with them). Even better, the parts are available today, in quantity from LCSC:

https://www.lcsc.com/products/Microcontroller-Units-MCUs-MPUs-SOCs_11329.html?keyword=PY32

So much for the arguments that one can't have cheap ARM micros because of the ARM IP licensing costs.

4 Comments
2023/02/05
11:42 UTC

49

A111: 60 GHz Pulsed Coherent Radar - Integrated Baseband, RF front-end and Antenna in Package

I used this chip for a job to measure liquid-levels. Really cool and works well but it seemed to be a bit complicated to create the FW/SW for it.

https://www.mouser.se/ProductDetail/Acconeer/A111-001-TR?qs=eP2BKZSCXI7cb1tJ4izqfA%3D%3D

6 Comments
2023/01/25
20:09 UTC

25

WCH CH32V003 - dirt cheap 48MHz RISC-V Microcontroller, 16KB flash, 2KB RAM, SO8 / SO16 / TSSOP20 / QFN20 packages

WCH Launches a Sub-10¢ RISC-V Microcontroller, While a $6.90 Dev Board Gets You Started

WCH CH32V003 webpage

11 Comments
2022/11/02
06:52 UTC

23

The RISC-V MCU CH32V307 is a bad boy

5 Comments
2022/05/20
04:13 UTC

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