Have you ever wondered why you get a spark when you unplug a hair dryer? It's not just a coincidence. The spark is actually caused by a sudden change in the magnetic field. When you pull out the plug, the current stops flowing, and the magnetic field drops to zero. This creates a high voltage that ionizes the air and makes a spark. But this same effect can be useful in devices like chargers.
A charger uses a similar principle to take high voltage mains electricity and turn it into smooth low voltage DC for your phone or laptop. To do this, the current is switched on and off hundreds of thousands of times per second using transistors. This creates little pulses of electricity that need to be smoothed out. That's where an inductor comes in. It's like a shock absorber that resists sudden changes in current.
When the current rises, the inductor stores energy in a magnetic field, and when the current falls, it releases that energy again. This helps turn choppy electrical pulses into steady DC. But there's a trade-off. The higher the voltage the inductor has to handle, the bigger it needs to be. That's why high power chargers need really large inductors.
However, Anker has redesigned the circuitry in their fast chargers using a technique called MBuck. This allows them to split the conversion across multiple levels and switches it up to 200,000 times per second. As a result, the inductors can be shrunk to a quarter of the standard size, making it possible to pack 160 watts of fast charging into a compact body.
