A printed circuit board (pcb) mechanically supports and electrically connects electronic components using conductive tracks, pads and other features etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. pcb's can be single sided (one copper layer), double sided (two copper layers) or multi-layer. Conductor on different layers are connected with plated-through holes called vias. Advanced PCB's may contain components - capacitors, resistors or active devices - embedded in the substrate.
A careful PCB layout is critical for proper operation of power electronics devices. While routing of control circuits can be done by an auto routing pcb software, critical power circuits should be placed by hand.
1. High frequency circuit design requires careful grounding. The "ground" in a circuit is supposed to be at one potential, but in reality it is not. When ground currents flow through traces which have non-zero impedance, voltage differences will occur at different points along the ground path. To minimize these voltages use ground plane for control circuit. Try to make most of signal ground connections through vias to this ground plane rather than through PC traces.
2. For each power supply stage, keep power ground and control ground separately. Tie them together [If they are electrically connected] in one point near DC output return of the given stage.
3. If you use a multilayer printed circuit board with surface mount components, place control ground plane on an inner layer so that it acts as a shield between power and control circuits.
4. Minimize areas and lengths of the loops which contain high frequency switching currents.
5. Place capacitors that bypass bias supply voltages and reference pins (if any) of all ICs physically close to the corresponding pins. For driver chips use a combination of a large capacitor (10 µF - 100 µF) and a small ceramic capacitor (0.1 µF – 1.0 µF).
6. Place filter capacitors so that their leads physically go right into the printed circuit board traces that carry mainstream of the current to be filtered.
7. If you parallel power semiconductors, when doing PCB layout try to use symmetrical routing with equal impedances for each of the paralleled devices.
8. Choose the width of circuit board traces based on acceptable temperature rise at the rated current per IPC2152 as well as acceptable DC and AC impedances. Also, make sure that the PC trace will not fuse at any abnormal current (such as short circuit current) that could develop in the circuit before a electronic protection activates or a fuse clears.
9. PWB distances between various circuits should be determined according to the requirements of applicable standards. For example, for the product covered by UL 60950-1 the creepage and clearance from primary circuits to secondary circuits and safety ground should be determined from the Tables 2K through 2N of this standard. In a typical commercial application with 120/250 VAC input, creepage between primary and low-voltage secondary circuitry per UL/IEC 60950 should be 6.4 mm minimum. For more details see our guide to PCB trace spacing.
10. For circuit spacing in non-UL applications you can generally use the recommendations of Table 6-1 of IPC-2221A. IPC-2221 is a generic standard for PCB design which replaced old IPC D-275. The recommended spacing for power supply circuits is given by IPC-9592B. In my view, the above IPC guidelines are too conservative. Note that all IPC standard are voluntary rather then mandatory.
11. Schematic design and PCB layout are often done by different engineers. A PCB designer usually does not know the details of the SMPS circuit operation and criticality of components location. In this case, the electrical designer should provide this information to the circuit board designer, help set design rules and closely supervise the routing process. Professional schematic capture software allows you to set various constraints for specific nets or groups of components. Particularly, you can specify minimum line width, net spacing type, and even maximum and relative signal propagation delays.
PCB layout designer rules
1.) seperate the power grounds, signal grounds, analog grounds, digital grounds, control grounds
2.) Keep inputs and outputs seperated and isolate to prevent oscillations
3.) Oscillation can happen from the inverting input and non-ineverting input of op-amps, coupling between parallel signal traces
4.) Place Capacitors that bypass supply voltages or decouple very close to the IC chip pins
5.) Use VIAS for signal grounds
6.) Keep power and ground track/traces running close proximity?
7.) Need Proper terminations of unused Op amp pins or sections
8.) Give good spacing and Clearance between tracks and pads
9.) Put Reference designators are both on the schematic and on the PCB silkscreen to help troubleshooting
10.) Put alot of TEST POINTs on the PCB's for each stage/section to break down into blocks to help troubleshooting
11.) Put alot of board cut/jumpers to isolate sections & stages from the power supply, to each stage/section on the circuit to isolate them if needed to troubleshoot or seperate the power supply if blown
12.) Put connections on the edges of the PCB's
13.) Isolate and seperate multiple inputs and outputs VCC and Grounds example. if you have 7 input molex connectors and 7 output molex connector and their is a SHORT from VCC to ground it will damage every single input and output IC chips
14.) Keep the Clock signal seperate/isolated from analog signals or amplication inputs
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