Nerd Ralph loves cheap and dirty hacks, and for that we applaud him. His latest endeavor is a LiFePO4 battery charger that he made out of parts he had on hand for under $0.50 US. (Although we think he ...

The TL431 is a three-terminal programmable shunt regulator that implements Zener-like references with low temperature coefficients. Its output can be programmed from the internally set reference of ...

The circuit in Figure 1 is a high-power analog of the popular TL431 programmable shunt regulator. This two-terminal circuit is convenient when the drain of the P-channel FET is grounded, since it ...

[Ken Shirriff] had to get down into a bit of semiconductor physics to give us an explanation of the TL431, which he calls “the most common chip you’ve never heard of”. [Ken] may well be right about ...

For the PDF version of this article, click here. Most offline and telecom power supplies need a method to isolate the relatively high input voltage from lower voltage outputs to provide safety, ...