To maintain high efficiency at light loads, the device enters power save mode (PSM) at the boundary to discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). This happens when the output current becomes smaller than half of the ripple current of the inductor. The device operates now with a fixed on-time and the switching frequency further decreases proportionally to the load current. It can be calculated as:

Equation 2.

In PSM, the output voltage rises slightly above the nominal target, which can be minimized using larger output capacitance. At duty cycles larger than 90%, the device may not enter PSM. The device maintains output regulation in PWM mode.