STMicroelectronics is enhancing the sustainability of personal computing with its latest innovation, ST-ONE. ST-ONE sets to increase energy efficiency in a wide variety of ac-dc adapters, fully compliant with USB-PD 3.1, including laptop and smartphone chargers. New adapters built with ST-ONE can reduce both CO2 emissions and the quantity of plastics consumed.
The new ST-ONE chip pairs with ST’s MasterGaN power output modules based on advanced gallium-nitride (GaN) semiconductor technology. The GaN chips enable significant energy savings and smaller equipment dimensions.
Although laptops provide optional power-saving settings, every machine can save even more energy if equipped with a more efficient power adapter. This improves the environmental profile and CO2 footprint. The ST-ONE chip is optimized for controlling power supplies that recover energy normally dissipated as heat from conventional circuits. It also simplifies circuit design with a significant reduction in the number of components, enabling this type of power supply to become more robust, affordable, and more widely adopted throughout the market.
“If every power adapter achieved at least 1% higher efficiency, which is possible using the ST-ONE energy-recovery circuit design, the world could save about 93 terawatt-hours of energy, equivalent to the output of 15 nuclear plants,” commented Domenico Arrigo, Industrial and Power Conversion Division General Manager, STMicroelectronics. “In addition, if one billion chargers worldwide were to use our technology, 0.2 million tons of plastics and raw materials could be saved.”
The reduction in consumption of materials such as plastics is achieved with the increase in so-called power density that enables smaller components to manage larger power delivery. A high power density also cuts down on recycling and environmental costs.
On display at the Embedded World exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, ST’s reference design, EVLONE65W, enables a 65 W USB-C adapter of the same size and weight as a standard 20 W smartphone charger to handle the demands of charging a laptop. This unit achieves the world’s highest power density, packing more than 1.8 W of power per cubic centimeter.
Click here to learn more about everything PE's coverage on Embedded World 2022
Click here to learn more about ST-ONE
