Electrothermal Circuit Design With Heat Flow Control—Synchronous Buck Converter Case Study

Electrothermal design of a synchronous buck converter with heat flow control is presented. A commercial reference circuit design for a synchronous buck converter is selected for the study. A functional printed circuit board (PCB) of the converter is fabricated and tested to establish baseline performance. The baseline PCB layout is modified by incorporating a design of electrothermal traces from a heat flow control optimization study. Electrical plus thermal characteristics of each design are experimentally evaluated. It is found that the modified design manipulates the heat flow across the PCB. At low output current (<;5 A) and under free convection, the circuit with electrothermal traces produces slightly lower switch and inductor temperatures, 1 °C-3 °C, and higher circuit efficiency (up to 7.4%). At higher power levels with free convection, the modified circuit exhibits slightly high…