
11
FN6320.3
April 18, 2007
Soft-Start Operation
Soft-start must be implemented externally. One method, 
illustrated below, clamps the voltage on COMP. 
The COMP pin is clamped to the voltage on capacitor C1 
plus a base-emitter junction by transistor Q1. C1 is charged 
from VREF through resistor R1 and the base current of Q1. 
At power-up C1 is fully discharged, COMP is at ~0.7V, and 
the duty cycle is zero. As C1 charges, the voltage on COMP 
increases, and the duty cycle increases in proportion to the 
voltage on C1. When COMP reaches the steady state 
operating point, the control loop takes over and soft start is 
complete. C1 continues to charge up to VREF and no longer 
affects COMP. During power down, diode D1 quickly 
discharges C1 so that the soft start circuit is properly 
initialized prior to the next power on sequence.
Gate Drive
The ISL884xA is capable of sourcing and sinking 1A peak 
current. To limit the peak current through the IC, an optional 
external resistor may be placed between the totem-pole 
output of the IC (OUT pin) and the gate of the MOSFET. This 
small series resistor also damps any oscillations caused by 
the resonant tank of the parasitic inductances in the traces of 
the board and the FET’s input capacitance. 
Slope Compensation
For applications where the maximum duty cycle is less than 
50%, slope compensation may be used to improve noise 
immunity, particularly at lighter loads. The amount of slope 
compensation required for noise immunity is determined 
empirically, but is generally about 10% of the full scale 
current feedback signal. For applications where the duty 
cycle is greater than 50%, slope compensation is required to 
prevent instability. 
Slope compensation may be accomplished by summing an 
external ramp with the current feedback signal or by 
subtracting the external ramp from the voltage feedback 
error signal. Adding the external ramp to the current 
feedback signal is the more popular method.
From the small signal current-mode model [1] it can be 
shown that the naturally-sampled modulator gain, Fm, 
without slope compensation, is in Equation 6.
where Sn is the slope of the sawtooth signal and Tsw is the 
duration of the half-cycle. When an external ramp is added, 
the modulator gain becomes:
where Se is slope of the external ramp and
The criteria for determining the correct amount of external 
ramp can be determined by appropriately setting the 
damping factor of the double-pole located at the switching 
frequency. The double-pole will be critically damped if the 
Q-factor is set to 1, over-damped for Q < 1, and 
under-damped for Q > 1. An under-damped condition may 
result in current loop instability.
where D is the percent of on time during a switching cycle. 
Setting Q = 1 and solving for Se yields
Since Sn and Se are the on time slopes of the current ramp 
and the external ramp, respectively, they can be multiplied 
by t
ON
 to obtain the voltage change that occurs during t
ON
. 
where Vn is the change in the current feedback signal (
Δ
I) 
during the on time and Ve is the voltage that must be added 
by the external ramp. 
For a flyback converter, Vn can be solved for in terms of 
input voltage, current transducer components, and primary 
inductance, yielding
where R
CS
 is the current sense resistor, f
sw 
is the switching 
frequency, L
p
 is the primary inductance, V
IN
 is the minimum 
input voltage, and D is the maximum duty cycle. 
FIGURE 5. SOFT-START
VREF
COMP
GND
I
C1
Q1
D1
R1
Fm
-------------------
=
(EQ. 6)
Fm
+
(
)
Tsw
--------------------------------------
c
---------------------------
=
=
(EQ. 7)
m
c
1
-------
+
=
(EQ. 8)
Q
–
π
 m
c
1
D
(
)
0.5
–
(
)
-------------------------------------------------
=
(EQ. 9)
S
e
S
n
1
π
--
0.5
+
–
1
D
-------------
1
–
=
(EQ. 10)
V
e
V
n
1
π
--
0.5
+
–
1
D
-------------
1
–
=
(EQ. 11)
V
e
D T
----------------------------------------------------
V
R
p
1
π
--
0.5
+
D
---–
1
–
=
V
(EQ. 12)
ISL8840A, ISL8841A, ISL8842A, ISL8843A, ISL8844A, ISL8845A