The 2023 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), a premier conference in the field of integrated circuit design, was recently held in San Antonio, Texas, USA.

The paper “A Li-ion Battery Input 96.8% Peak Efficiency Single-Inductor Off-Chip-Capacitor-Free 2-Switch LED Driver with Two-Color Mixing Capability” by the research group of Yuan GAO, Assistant Professor of the School of Microelectronics (SME) at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), was selected for the conference and nominated for the Best Student Paper Candidate.

Caiyu TONG, a master’s student of SME and the first author of the paper, presented an oral presentation at the conference and participated in the Best Paper Poster Session.

This paper proposed a brand-new LED driver circuit, which uses one inductor as the only off-chip component, without the requirement of an off-chip capacitor, and uses two on-chip NMOSs as power switching transistors to achieve a high integration of the system and the chip.

In addition, the circuit with the new LED driver topology has an efficiency advantage (96.8% peak efficiency) compared to other Li-ion battery-input LED drivers and it supports a wide-range PWM dimming with duty ratios from 0.5% to 99.5% and additional color mixing capability. The performance and functionality have been improved significantly.

The IEEE CICC is one of the premier conferences in the field of integrated circuit design. It is sponsored by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society and co-sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society. The conference discusses new technologies in integrated circuit design and networking with academics, authors, and industry experts.