Nice Chips

[Dubbie]

There is a subreddit called "Nice Chips" where people post ICs they have used that they think are nice for some reason.
I find it interesting to keep up with what is out there. However there isn't a lot of traffic there. I thought it would be good if this forum had a thread where people can post about a chip they particularly like. Maybe explain why it solves a problem that other alternatives don't.

[Dubbie]

I'll start with the Texas Instruments TPS62743

This is a buck converter that is extremely small.
On one of my boards, my entire power supply including passives only takes 5mm x 2.5mm of space. It has plenty of power for a micro and a couple of other chips at 400mA and only 320nA quiescent current.

I have been using it to power 2V micros from tiny 3.7V rechargeable Lipos.

https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps62743.pdf

[Sal Ammoniac]

Ummm... Nice chips.

[tooki]

Ummm... Nice chips.

And I just ate the last of these very nice chips:

[ANTALIFE]

I am really digging these beetroot chips

Also for those curious this is the subreddit OP was referring to
https://www.reddit.com/r/nicechips/

[Red Squirrel]

Nothing too special but given I'm a noob with not too much experience, here's one I played with recently:

https://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/SG3525A-D.PDF

It's a push-pull controller that is a through hole dip package which makes it easy for breadboarding with.  I'm sure there are others but this is one I found.    Yeah you can do the same with an MCU but I always like to see if I can find a dedicated chip especially if what I'm making does not require a MCU.   This one also acts as a mosfet driver so probably better than a MCU if you want to drive really big mosfets with it.

When I feel brave enough I want to experiment using this with mains so I can make my own step down converter to drive those panel meter type bench supplies Dave did a video on a while back, I bought 3 and never actually put them to use. Could use a plug pack, but what's the fun in that?   

[Circlotron]

Nothing too special but given I'm a noob with not too much experience, here's one I played with recently:

https://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/SG3525A-D.PDF

I've used lots and lots of those and I like them too. One nasty little thing that caused me trouble for quite a few years - I made these boost converters for automotive use, 10-14V in and 16V out at 10 amps and had a pair of toroid inductors taking turns being switched by two mosfets. When I cranked up the load current one toroid would run fairly warm and the other much cooler. The pulse width coming out of the two '3525 outputs were not equal. If I manually wound the set voltage up and down there was a point where the error amplifier output would take a little jump. After much stuffing around I found that you cannot use a timing capacitor discharge resistor of zero ohms even though the datasheet says you can! Well, you can't use it without problems. Ended up using 390 ohms because I was only switching at 20kHz so that was enough. After that they ran beautifully. I was using ST brand chips. Not sure if it is a problem with other manufacturers.

[Alex Eisenhut]

http://www.potatosemi.com/

Never used any but funny name.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Ah.. chippies!




To answer the OP in all honesty, there are two, the mos 6510, nudged out by the intel Pentium

[Dubbie]

Really regretting the thread name now.
Too many absolutely hilarious comedians in here.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Really regretting the thread name now.
Too many absolutely hilarious comedians in here.

I think I speak for everyone in the world at the moment, we are just blowing off a little steam.

 

[Microdoser]

One of my favourite chips recently is the TCA9803DGKR. It's an I2C redriver that has very good voltage specs allowing an interface between devices that might not put out the low voltages required for the signal to be understood. Only about £0.70 too

Just a standard 8 pin SOIC so not imageworthy but a nice chip nonetheless

[T3sl4co1l]

Some regulators/controllers, delivered via meme: https://imgur.com/gallery/M1S0DbI

Speaking of memes, a recommendation in this form:



No: 6N136
Yes: SFH6345

The SFH6345 has over 10x higher dV/dt rating, making it suitable for MOSFET/IGBT gate drives, and anything else.  The 6N136 is barely enough for isolating serial ports.

Or 6N137 for logic level output, or usually any of the digital isolator parts are quite good.

Dozens of other things I could think of, probably better to leave them specific to application rather than trying to list everything at once.

Tim