Patent 7746153 was granted and assigned to National Semiconductor on June, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A circuit for recovering charge at the gate of an output transistor arranged to drive the output of a switching circuit such as a switching regulator or controller. A substantial portion of the charge for each switching cycle is recovered under a wide range of load conditions for the switching circuit, e.g., no load, partial load, or full load. Also, charge recovery operates effectively with a switching circuit that is arranged to switch in a synchronous or asynchronous manner. Additionally, if the output voltage of a switching circuit is 12 or more volts, the amount of charge that can be saved can be relatively substantial.