Texas Instruments Incorporated (www.ti.com) has unveiled the first in a new range of integrated three-phase brushless motor pre-drivers, the DRV8301. This highly integrated pre-driver offer reduced board space by as much as 60 percent than the closest integrated solution. Its ability to drive sub-10-A to 60-A external FETs enables it to provide greater efficiency, current scalability and improved thermal performance in brushless DC (BLDC) as well as in permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) applications, including medical pumps, ventilation pumps, robotics, commercial refrigeration cooling systems, e-bikes, power tools and other high-torque industrial motor control applications.

The DRV8301 also reduces system complexity and bill of materials while optimizing reliability. Aside from offering a three-phase brushless gate driver that is fully protected, it also features two current-sense amplifiers with feedback resistors and integrated input for current measurements, SPI interface for device configuration from the MCU, and a 1.5-A step-down voltage regulator to propel the system microcontroller (MCU), including the C2000(TM) Piccolo(TM).

A three-phase brushless gate driver allows the DRV8301 to adjust dead-time and slew rate to optimize performance. Its two bi-directional current-sense amplifiers includes output offset, adjustable gain and DC calibration circuitry to effectively reduce board space as well as system cost. The DRV8301 improves motor performance by minimizing the DC calibration circuitry’s DC offset and drift over temperature.

With two-thermal cycle-by-cycle over current protection, this new product also reduces design complexity while improving system reliability.