Trinamic’s 3-phase MOSFET gate driver maximizes battery life and efficiency

TRINAMIC Motion Control GmbH & Co. KG, now part of Maxim Integrated Products, recently introduced the fully integrated TMC6140-LA 3-phase MOSFET gate driver that simplifies design and maximizes battery life of brushless direct-current (DC) motor drives.

The TMC6140-LA 3-phase MOSFET gate driver integrates all three bottom shunt amplifiers to provide a complete motor drive solution with 30 percent improved power efficiency — while simplifying design by reducing component count by half when compared to similar solutions.

“The integrated current sense and diagnostics features are key for enabling functional safety without adding complicated circuitry or additional components to any system’s design,” said Michael Randt, founder of Trinamic Motion Control. “This allows engineers to increase efficiency by 30 percent with minimal effort.”

The TMC6140-LA is optimized for performance over a wide voltage range, making it well-suited for servo motors, brushless motors and permanent magnet synchronous motors. The three-phase gate driver is equipped with pins to add a charge pump, statically stabilizing the gate voltages of external MOSFETs in three-phase motors with up to 100A of coil current.

Offered in a 36-pin quad-flat no-leads (QFN) package, the gate driver is a flexible solution offering 0.5 or 1.0A gate driver current for 5 to 30V DC battery-powered applications, such as power tools where voltages can drop below 10V.

Integrated current sense and diagnostics features add functional safety while simplifying design.

Advantages

Simple design and smallest size: The TMC6140-LA integrates three bottom shunt amplifiers for current sense and diagnostics, as well as a switching regulator, simplifying design and reducing component count by 50 percent compared to similar solutions.
Longer battery life: For applications at 15V or lower, the switching regulator output can be used to stabilize the power supply, which maintains the output signals to ensure consistent operation over an extended battery life.
Enhanced diagnostics: Integrated shunt amplifiers provide current sensing for status information. An analog programmable short detection and diagnostic output reports status back to the host.