Robust Gate Drive ICs with Low Power Consumption

Infineon Technologies AG introduces the 1EDN EiceDRIVER™ family. This 1-channel low-side gate driver IC is designed to drive MOSFETs, IGBTs as well as GaN power devices. Its pin-out and packages are fully compatible to the industry standard which eases the drop-in replacement for existing designs. Applications which can leverage the outstanding performance of the driver IC include telecom and industrial ac-dc power supplies, dc-dc converters, power factor correction in electrical vehicle charging stations as well as industrial applications such as ac power tools, uninterruptible power systems, air conditioning and fans. The new family also supports wireless charging applications.

Compared to other 1-channel low-side gate driver ICs, the 1EDN EiceDRIVER family from Infineon leads the industry in low internal power consumption. The low-ohmic output stages translate into a higher efficiency of more than 30 percent. This allows for additional design flexibility and driving more power devices whilst staying within the thermal budget.

The outputs of the 1EDN family feature an industry-leading reverse current robustness of 5A. This eliminates the need for protection diodes when driving MOSFETs with large parasitic source inductances typically found in TO-220 or TO-247 packages. With the new driver ICs customers can thus save on both, BoM and PCB area.

The 1EDN portfolio excels by its -10 V input robustness securing a crucial safety margin against ground-shifts when driving gate-transformers. This extra noise robustness protects against electrical overstress of the inputs or latch-up of the driver IC. Additionally, the 1EDN family includes variants with separate source and sink output terminals. This eases the turn-on and turn-off speed optimization, concurrently saving one external diode. The 1EDN EiceDRIVER family is in volume production and will be showcased at electronica 2016.