Apr 23 2009
Leadis Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: LDIS), an analog and mixed-signal semiconductor developer of LED drivers, and Touch ICs for mobile consumer electronic devices, today announced sample availability of the LDS8710, an innovative inductor-based, high-efficiency LED Driver that eliminates the expensive external Schottky diode normally used in the rectification loop. The LDS8710 is the first in a family of drivers which includes the LDS8716 and LDS8714. The LDS8710/16/14 drive up to 10, 6 and 4 LEDs in series, respectively, from a single-cell Lithium-Ion battery.
The LDS8710 family is ideal for applications such as Smart Phones, Portable Multimedia Devices, Personal Navigation Systems and Digital Photo Frames where battery life, display size, resolution and brightness are critical.
Each device in the family features a patent-pending, integrated synchronous rectifier which eliminates the external Schottky diode and the need for complicated and costly isolation FETs. This reduces the bill of material and footprint of the display sub-system, and simplifies the design-in process and time to market of the end product.
The LDS8710 drives up to 10 LEDs with factory-preset maximum LED current values of 20, 25 or 30mA with 1% accuracy. This eliminates the need for an external sense resistor and further simplifies the system. Since the LDS8710 family operates at a fixed switching frequency, small low profile passive components (10 - 22 mH inductors and 0.1 mF high voltage ceramic capacitors) can be used, which further reduces the system's bill of material and allows for a thin backlight unit profile. Moreover, the use of the 40-V rated integrated synchronous rectifier makes the efficiency dependent upon only one external component parameter: the inductor DCR. This further simplifies the system design, while simultaneously achieving greater than 83% efficiency.
"We are pleased to bring to the market the first LED Driver family featuring our patent-pending integrated synchronous rectifier. This novel architecture has been thought out with one main goal in mind: simplify our customers' design experience and accelerate their time-to-market," said Donato Montanari, Vice President at Leadis. "By reducing the number of external components, allowing customers to pre-select maximum current ratings, implementing robust protection (over voltage, under voltage, over temperature and over current) and offering wide PWM dimming frequencies (100Hz to 10K Hz), every feature of the LDS8710 family is meant to improve our customer's time-to-market and reduce their bill of material."