11. Inductor Selection

Question.7

Shantanu is designing a 2A buck converter and finds an inductor with the following appealing specs:

Inductance: 6.8 µH
Saturation Current (Isat): 4.5 A
RMS Current (Irms): 1.6 A
DCR: 70 mΩ

At first glance, the Isat looks excellent, far above the 2A load, so he proceeds with this part.
But during testing, the inductor gets hot and shows value drift. What could be the problem?

Isat was too close to the operating current
The DCR is too high for buck converters
Irms was too low — causing thermal stress
The inductance was too small to regulate properly

Restart quiz!