Nexperia’s latest gate drivers deliver efficiency and smoother motor control

Nexperia has introduced a new series of high-performance gate driver ICs designed for driving both high-side and low-side N-channel MOSFETs in a synchronous buck or half-bridge configuration.

Credit: Nexperia

These devices have been designed to deliver high current output and improved dynamic performance, boosting efficiency and robustness in applications.

The automotive-qualified NGD4300-Q100 is intended for electronic power steering and power converters, while the NGD4300 has been designed for use with DC-DC converters in consumer devices, servers and telecommunications equipment as well as for micro-inverters used in various industrial applications.

The floating high-side driver in these ICs can operate from bus voltages up to 120 V and use a bootstrap supply with an integrated diode, features which simplify overall system design and help to reduce PCB size. They can deliver up to 4 A (peak) source and 5 A of sink current to guarantee short rise and fall times even for heavy loads.

The gate driver has a low 13 ns delay and offers enhanced channel-to-channel delay matching of only 1 ns. These delays are significantly lower than is the case with many other gate drivers and helps to minimise dead-time by maximising switching duty-cycle. 4 ns rise and 3.5 ns (typical) fall times help to deliver higher efficiency and support high frequency and fast system control. These gate drivers accept input control signals complying with both TTL and CMOS logic levels.

In terms of robustness in power conversion and motor driving applications, these ICs are fabricated using a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process which allows the negative voltage tolerance of the HS pin to extend to -5 V, significantly reducing the risk of damage caused by system parasitic component and unexpected spikes.

The NGD4300 and NGD4300-Q100 are available in a choice of DFN-8, SO-8 and HSO-8 packages to offer engineers the flexibility to trade-off between device size and thermal performance, depending on application requirements.