buck converter

buck converter simulation

A buck converter is a voltage step down and current step up converter.
The simplest way to reduce the voltage of a DC supply is to use a linear regulator (such as a 7805), but linear regulators waste energy as they operate by dissipating excess power as heat. Buck converters, on the other hand, can be remarkably efficient (95% or higher for integrated circuits), making them useful for tasks such as converting the main voltage in a computer (12 V in a desktop, 12-24 V in a laptop) down to the 0.8-1.8 volts needed by the processor.