About PowerRef
Verified component reference for power electronics and RF/microwave engineers
PowerRef exists because finding a trustworthy answer to "can this part do X in my circuit?" takes too long. Datasheets are in PDFs. Distributors show prices. Forums have opinions. Nobody aggregates verified, citable application guidance at part-number level.
Every spec on this site traces directly to a distributor API response or manufacturer datasheet — not a reseller's marketing copy, not a forum post. Source badges on each row show exactly where the value came from.
What's here
- Datasheet quick-reference pages — spec tables with per-row source provenance, when-to-use and when-not-to-use guidance, minimum external components, and design equations pre-computed from verified specs
- Component comparisons — side-by-side trade-offs at part-number level with engineering judgment on which to choose and why
- Design guides — topology selection, component sizing, and failure mode analysis for common power electronics problems
Coverage
- General power electronics: buck converters, boost converters, LDOs, gate drivers, power MOSFETs, current sense amplifiers
- Pulsed power: thyristors, crowbar circuits, pulse forming network components, high-voltage diodes, IGBTs for pulse discharge
- RF/microwave hardware: GNSS LNAs, bandpass filters, timing references, ADC front-ends for receiver design
How specs are sourced
Each component is ingested from the Digi-Key and Mouser APIs, then cross-referenced against the manufacturer datasheet. Specs are tagged with a provenance tier:
- 🔵 api — value from distributor API (Digi-Key / Mouser structured data)
- 🟢 table — extracted from a datasheet electrical characteristics table
- 🟡 llm — extracted from datasheet prose; lower confidence, verify before use
Pages with fewer than 8 verified specs are held for review and not published.