TI reduces size and weight of motor drive applications
Claimed to be the industry’s smallest gate driver and power MOSFET for motor control, the DRV832x brushless DC (BLDC) gate drivers and CSD88584/99 NexFET Power Blocks, when used together, require as little as 511mm2. This, says Texas Instruments (TI), is half the board space of competing solutions. Designers can therefore double the power density in space-constrained motor drives.
The DRV832x BLDC gate drivers feature a smart gate-drive architecture that eliminates up to 24 components traditionally used to set the gate drive current while enabling designers to easily adjust field effect transistor (FET) switching to optimise power loss and electromagnetic compliance.
The CSD88584Q5DC and CSD88599Q5DC NexFET power blocks use two FETs in a stacked-die configuration, which doubles power density and minimises the FET resistance and parasitic inductances typically found in side-by-side FET configurations, says TI.
An 18V compact BLDC motor reference design demonstrates how the DRV8323 gate driver and CSD88584Q5DC power block can drive 11W/cm3 power and enable engineers to jump-start their designs for smaller, lighter-weight power tools, integrated motor modules and drones.
The combined CSD88584/99 and DRV832x delivers 700W of motor power without a heatsink, providing 50 per cent higher current than conventional solutions without increasing the footprint.
The smart gate driver and power block are capable of driving a peak current of up to 160A for more than one second. The combination also offers optimal system protection, enabling shorter trace lengths and actively preventing unintended FET turn-on, together with under-voltage, over-current and thermal protection.
The CSD88584Q5DC and CSD88599Q5DC power blocks are in TI’s DualCool thermally enhanced package, which enables designers to apply a heatsink to the top of the device to decrease thermal impedance and increase the amount of power dissipated to maintain safe operating temperatures for the board and end application.
The power blocks’ switch-node clip helps eliminate parasitic inductance between high- and low-side FETs. The DRV832x gate driver’s passive component integration minimises board traces.
In addition to the 18V BLDC motor reference design, there is a three-phase smart gate-driver evaluation module (EVM) which allows designers to drive a 15A, three-phase BLDC motor using the DRV8323R gate driver, CSD88599Q5DC power block and the TI MSP430F5529 microcontroller LaunchPad development kit.
The DRV832x BLDC smart gate drivers offer peripheral and interface options, namely with or without an integrated buck regulator or three integrated current-shunt amplifiers. Each device option is available in a hardware or serial interface and comes in quad flat no-lead (QFN) packaging.
The CSD88584/ CSD88599 power blocks come in DualCool small outline no-lead (SON) packaging, with 40- or 60V breakdown voltage (BVDSS) choices. All devices are available now.
