New Industry Products

Renesas Integrated Driver-MOSFET Achieves 96.5% Efficiency & Has 6 x 6mm Package For Intel® DrMOS Standard Products

December 15, 2008 by Jeff Shepard

Renesas Technology America, Inc. announced the R2J20651NP, a 35A Integrated Driver-MOSFET for CPU and DDR type SDRAM power supplies in PCs, servers and other types of electronic products. When running at a switching speed of 200kHz and producing 1.8Vdc from a 5Vdc input, it achieves up to 96.5% efficiency, said to be the highest in the industry. Thus the device is said to aid the design of green systems that run cooler and use less power. Moreover, it is said to incorporate control functions that can be used to help improve system safety.

Integrating two high-side/low-side power MOSFETs and a driver circuit in a small (6 x 6mm) 40-pin QFN package, the Renesas R2J20651NP is a tenth-generation MOSFET product. It conforms to the "Integrated Driver-MOSFET (DrMOS)" Specifications, Revision 3.0 from Intel Corp.. This conformance enables customers to implement standardized system designs, including 5V single-supply-voltage motherboards that benefit from proven component technology.

The efficient integrated driver MOSFET is said to permit the manufacture of products that are more compact and convenient. By decreasing heat generation, the company claims that it allows design engineers to use a smaller heat sink and fewer capacitors and other passive components.

Also, the device’s 6 x 6mm package, built with the high thermal dissipation/low-loss package technology of a wireless copper-clip structure, is almost half the size of the previous-generation chip, saving circuit-board space. Furthermore, since the new device can handle up to 35A, it can easily implement high-density dc-dc converters. Its output range is 0.8 to 5.0V.

The R2J20651NP includes, for the first time in a DrMOS standard product, a temperature-detection function that sends a warning signal when the driver IC temperature exceeds 130°C. This signal has various uses, depending on the application. For example, when connected to the system power supply control IC, this signal can be used to shut down the system to help prevent circuit failure in advance by tasking the driver IC MOSFET to monitor its own temperature and heat generation.

Another feature of the R2J20651NP is a low-side MOSFET disable function. The power device supports a discontinuous operating mode in which its low-side MOSFET is forcibly turned off by internal logic using the LSDBL# pin that is connected to the driver IC. This function is effective at preventing two types of problems: a rapid power discharge or load-side voltage spikes that might otherwise occur during pre-bias operation when there is already a voltage remaining on the outputs at startup. This stop function also boosts efficiency during light-load operation.