TI introduces the industry's smallest gate driver and power MOSFET solution for motor control

Texas Instruments (TI) (NASDAQ:TXN) today introduced two new device families that help reduce size and weight in motor drive applications. When used together, DRV832x brushless DC (BLDC) gate drivers and CSD88584/99 NexFET™ Power Blocks require as little as 511 mm2, half the board space of competing solutions.

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 optimize power loss and electromagnetic compliance. The CSD88584Q5DC and CSD88599Q5DC power blocks leverage two FETs in a unique stacked-die configuration, which doubles power density and minimizes the FET resistance and parasitic inductances typically found in side-by-side FET configurations.An 18-volt compact BLDC motor reference design demonstrates how the DRV8323 gate driver and CSD88584Q5DC power block can drive 11 W/cm3 power and enable engineers to jump-start their designs for smaller, lighter-weight power tools, integrated motor modules, drones and more.

Benefits of using a CSD88584/99 and DRV832x device together
Maximum power density: The combined solution delivers 700 W of motor power without a heat sink, providing 50 percent higher current than conventional solutions without increasing the footprint.
High peak current: As demonstrated by the 18-volt BLDC reference design, the smart gate driver and power block are capable of driving a peak current of up to 160 A for more than 1 second.
Optimal system protection: The combination enables shorter trace lengths and actively prevents unintended FET turn-on, while also providing undervoltage, overcurrent and thermal protection.
Superior thermal performance: The CSD88584Q5DC and CSD88599Q5DC power blocks come in TI's DualCool™ thermally enhanced package, which enables designers to apply a heat sink 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.
Clean switching: The power blocks' switch-node clip helps eliminate parasitic inductance between high- and low-side FETs. Additionally, the DRV832x gate driver's passive component integration minimizes board traces.

Tools and support to jump-start design
In addition to the 18-volt BLDC motor reference design, engineers can search for other motor reference designs that use the power blocks and gate drivers to help solve their system design challenges. The three-phase smart gate-driver evaluation module (EVM) allows designers to drive a 15-A, three-phase BLDC motor using the DRV8323R gate driver, CSD88599Q5DC power block and MSP430F5529microcontroller LaunchPad™ development kit. The EVM is available from the TI store for US$99.00.

Package, availability and pricing
The new DRV832x BLDC smart gate drivers offer peripheral and interface options for engineers to select the best device for their design: 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 CSD88584/99 power blocks come in DualCool small outline no-lead (SON) packaging, with 40- or 60-V breakdown voltage (BVDSS) choices.

A layer of diamond can prevent high-power electronic devices from overheating

Powerful electronic components can get very hot. When many components are combined into a single semiconductor chip, heating can become a real problem. An overheating electronic component wastes energy and is at risk of behaving unpredictably or failing altogether. Consequently, thermal management is a vital design consideration.This becomes particularly important in devices made from gallium nitride. "Gallium nitride is capable of handling high voltages, and can enable higher power capability and very large bandwidth," says Yong Han from the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics. "But in a gallium nitride transistor chip, the heat concentrates on tiny areas, forming several hotspots." This exacerbates the heating problem.

Han and co-workers demonstrate both experimentally and numerically that a layer of diamond can spread heat and improve the thermal performance of gallium nitride devices.The researchers created a thermal test chip that contained eight tiny hotspots, each 0.45 by 0.3 millimeters in size, to generate the heat created in actual devices. They bonded this chip to a layer of high quality diamond fabricated using a technique called chemical vapor deposition. The diamond heat spreader and test chip were connected using a thermal compression bonding process. This was then connected to a microcooler, a device consisting of a series of micrometer-wide channels and a micro-jet impingement array. Water impinges on the heat source wall, and then passes through the micro-channels to remove the heat and keep the structure cool.Han and the team tried their device by generating 10–120 Watts of heating power in test chips of 100 and 200-micrometer thickness. To dissipate the heating power, the diamond heat spreading layer and microcooler helped maintain the structure at a temperature below 160 degrees Celsius. In fact, the maximum chip temperature was 27.3 per cent lower than another device using copper as the heat spreading layer, and over 40 per cent lower than in a device with no spreading layer.The experimental results were further confirmed by thermal simulations. The simulations also indicated that the performance could be improved further by increasing the thickness of the diamond layer, and that good bonding quality between the gallium nitride chip and the diamond heat spreader was crucial to obtain the best performance."We next hope to develop a novel micro-fluid cooler of higher and more uniform cooling capability, and to achieve thermal management using a diamond layer of high thermal conductivity near an electronic gate," says Han.

Wireless microcontroller integrates MCU and Bluetooth smart radio

The CC2640R2F SimpleLink ultra-low-power wireless microcontroller from Texas Instruments (TI) is in stock at Mouser Electronics. Part of TI’s CC26xx SimpleLink family of 2.4GHz devices, the CC2640R2F microcontroller features a small, single-chip system that integrates a flash-based microcontroller and Bluetooth Smart radio to target Bluetooth 4.2 and Bluetooth 5 low-energy applications.

The microcontroller combines a 61μA/MHz ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller and a rich peripheral set that includes an 8.2μA/MHz sensor controller. The 48MHz ARM microcontroller offers 128 kBytes of flash and 28 kBytes of SRAM and supports over-the-air (OTA) updates.
The sensor controller is ideal for interfacing external sensors and for collecting analog and digital data autonomously while the rest of the system is in sleep mode.
The device includes a 12-bit analogue-to-digital converter, up to 31 general-purpose inputs and outputs (GPIOs), and built-in robust security on chip with one of the simplest radio frequency (RF) and antenna designs available.
Minimal RF expertise is required to implement the device, which helps make development and layout extremely easy.
The wireless microcontroller is available in 2.7×2.7 mm WCSP and 4×4, 5×5 and 7×7 mm QFN packages, and is designed for a board array of wireless Internet of Things (IoT) applications, including health and fitness, industrial, and home and building automation.
With ready-to-use protocol stacks (including the SIMPLELINK-CC2640R2-SDK software development kit for Bluetooth 5), the SimpleLink portfolio of wireless connectivity solutions not only offers designers maximum flexibility and support but also delivers multi-standard capabilities with code- and pin-compatibility across Bluetooth Smart, 6LoWPAN, ZigBee and ZigBee RF4CE.