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The magic of DC-DC voltage conversion (2023)
Resistor-based dividers, linear regulators, buck converters, and other ways to adjust voltages.
The reason is simple: the voltage you get out of a typical battery or a cheap wall wart is seldom right for every part of the circuit — from motors, to LCD backlights, to latest-generation digital chips. The idea here is that a diode, if subjected to a controlled current flowing through it, develops a more or less constant voltage drop across its terminals as a consequence of the effort needed for electrons to power through the p-n junction depletion zone. On the flip side, a major limitation of simple charge pumps is that they lack voltage regulation: the device can produce arbitrary multiples of Vin, but if the supply fluctuates, so does the output of the converter.
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