New Industry Products

Pulse Power Bead Inductor Products Are Halogen-Free

June 28, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

Pulse, a Technitrol Company, announced that its full line of power bead products, used in voltage regulators for computing applications and point-of-load (PoL) products, are now halogen-free. Halogen elimination is part of Pulse’s on-going initiative to comply with the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical (REACH) regulation under EC 1907/2006.

Pulse’s halogen-free parts will be identified by the suffix HL, indicating that they comply with both halogen-free and lead-free standards. The first halogen-free series to be released was the PA0511, the most widely used power bead inductor series. Soon to follow will be high-efficiency coupled inductors for graphics and server applications. To request halogen-free parts, customers simply enter HL in place of NL as the part number suffix.

"It was more difficult than expected to find materials that comply with the halogen-free standards of less than 900 parts per million (ppm) chlorine, 900ppm bromine, and 1500ppm combined," explained John Gallagher, Field Applications Engineer for Pulse. "These elements often enter raw materials such as plastics and epoxies as impurities in the manufacturing process. Some vendors mistakenly think their products are halogen-free simply because they have not intentionally added these elements. Pulse decided to release the power bead products first, since many computer manufacturers requested them."

Pulse’s off-the-shelf power beads are said to offer high performance for multi-phase buck regulator applications. Their low direct current resistance (DCR) minimizes inductor conduction losses while their low-loss ferrite cores minimize inductor switching losses. Plus, their small footprint enables flexibility in board layout. Power bead inductors come in through-hole and surface mount configurations for use in power supplies for desktop and notebook computers, servers, graphics cards, and PoL applications.