Welcome to First Look, brought to you by Digi-Key and Maxim Integrated.
With the proliferation of portable devices and user demand for longer battery life, designers need to take advantage of power savings everywhere they can be found, while simultaneously adding better performance and more functionality. Maxim’s nanoPower technology and DARWIN microcontrollers deliver the longest battery life and pack more features into the smallest packages, and Maxim’s nanoPower Board demonstrates their combined benefits.
The board is a simple DMM that operates from a single button cell battery. It’s based on the MAX32660, an ultra-low-power DARWIN Generation U MCU with an Arm Cortex-M4 processor and floating point unit. The MAX32660 is optimized for complex sensor processing, has large memories, and has very low current consumption in active and low-power modes. The nanoPower board features the MCU in a 4mm x 4mm TQFN-EP, but it’s also offered in packages as small as a 1.6mm x 1.6mm 16-bump WLP.
The board also features a low-power analog signal chain using devices in tiny packages:
● the MAX40007 nanoPower op amp, which maximizes the ratio of gain bandwidth to supply current;
● the MAX9634 nanoPower precision current-sense amplifiers, with low offset, low gain error, and quiescent current under 1µA;
● the MAX9119 nanoPower comparators, which are offered with or without an internal reference and can tolerate inputs 200mV beyond the rails;
● and the low-power MAX11615 12-bit ADC, which draws 670µA at its max rate of 94.4ksps and drops to 0.5µA in power-down mode.
Finally, the board is powered by the MAX17222 nanoPower boost converter. The converter’s 300nA IQ is complemented by True Shutdown technology, which disconnects the output from the input and drops the total system shutdown current to just 0.5nA. The converter operates at 95% peak efficiency. It’s packaged in a 2mm x 2mm 6-pin µDFN and the output can be set from 1.8V to 5V using a single 1% resistor, keeping the total solution size to a minimum.
By combining Maxim’s DARWIN processors and nanoPower ICs, designers can integrate more functionality into a smaller space with a longer battery life.
See you next time on First Look.

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