New Ferrite Material Ideally Suited to Use in Power Converters

EPCOS has developed a new power ferrite material with an exceptionally low power loss. In contrast to existing materials, N95 offers a constant loss minimum of 310 kW/m3 over a broad temperature range of between 60 and 100 °C. Depending on the temperature this is 15 to 54 percent lower than the losses of conventional power ferrite materials. Another advantage is its high flux density of 525 mT at 25 °C and 410 mT at 100 °C.

The new material is thus particularly suitable for power converters in switch-mode power supplies, allowing optimized efficiency even at partial load. The material's high degree of temperature independence is an advantage especially under alternating load factors and above all in the partial load range of power supplies, where it reduces the thermal loss and thus unnecessarily consumed power. Typical applications are power supplies for servers with frequently changing load factors. N95 is predominantly available in core types E, ER and ETD.