AN9605: HIP2100EVAL2: A 50W, 48V-to-5V DC-DC Converter Using the HIP2100

The most popular DC-DC converter topologies are also the simplest the flyback converter and the forward converter. Much of their simplicity is because they employ a single power transistor referenced to the primary-side return. Though these topologies are straightforward, they do have some significant drawbacks in many applications. In these situations, designers turn to more elegant topologies, such as the full-bridge and half-bridge converters. These topologies are complicated mainly by having to drive multiple power transistors, where one or more of the transistors is not referenced to the primary-side return. These converters require either a pulse transformer or an IC driver that can level-shift the ground-referenced pulsewidth modulator (PWM) signal to the half-bridge node.