I'd like to get advice/insight on a design I'm working on.
I'm designing a 9VDC to +/-12V converter for use as an opamp power supply. It needs to have >=50mA current on both rails. My current plan is to configure the LT1054 as a dual-output voltage doubler (shown in Figure 24 of the datasheet). This should give me about +/-15V. I'm then going to use 100mA LDO's on either leg to further clean things up and regulate to +/-12V (79L12 and 78L12).
My question is regarding capacitor selection. I'd like to avoid using tantalum caps. I've found aluminum polymer caps with better specs (i.e. ESR and price), but they are physically fairly large. My question is are there any drawbacks to using through-hole ceramic caps in this application? Specifically for the three 10uF caps shown in the diagram. I believe ceramics have even lower ESR and are easy to find in the 1-10uF range.
What, if any, potential problems would ceramics cause here? Ringing? Excessive power dissipation? Just want to make sure since the datasheet doesn't suggest them.
Also, if anyone has good alternatives for a very clean 9V to +/-12V converter of a different design (i.e. not an LT1054), I'd be interested in that as well!
