The thermal advantages of directly paralleling regulators are shown here. In this example, two LT3085 2mm × 3mm DFN devices are mounted on a 1oz copper 4-layer PC board. They are placed approximately 1.5 inches apart and the board is mounted vertically for convection cooling. The tests were set up to measure the cooling performance and current sharing of these devices. The first test was done with approximately 1.6V input-to-output and 0.5A per device. This gave a 800mW dissipation in each device and a 1A output current. The temperature rise above ambient is approximately 28°C and both devices were within plus or minus 1°C. The thermograph shows the temperature distribution between these devices and the PC board reaches ambient temperature within about half an inch from the devices.

