ON Semiconductor — High-Voltage Gate Drivers Give Advantage of Superior Performance and Reliability

Strong gate-drive capability and good signal integrity are the basic requirements for high- performance gate drivers. Safety, reliability and robustness are the added requirements for high-voltage and high-power designs. ON Semiconductor’s high-voltage gate drivers fulfil the requirements of high-power designs by exceeding expectations in these parameters.

The high-voltage gate driver product line contains three product categories:

• Non-isolated
• Isolated
• High-side and low-side

In all three categories, the ON Semiconductor products provide three main benefits:

• High system efficiency by supplying a high drive current
• High reliability through better signal integrity
• Reduced system cost through integration of multiple functions

Non-isolated gate drivers are for high-voltage applications in which isolation is either not required, or is supplied through external isolation. The non-isolated drivers enable users to take advantage of a high drive current to improve system efficiency without the need for a bigger device, or for migration to a next- generation, more expensive device.

The high drive current eliminates the need for external buffers in most applications. The non- isolated drivers are offered in standard SO16 and SO8 packages. The SO16 versions have all the protection features and feedback signals on the low-voltage side. The SO8 package is available in three versions, each with a protection feature to offer design flexibility for applications that have tight cost or space constraints.

The non-isolated drivers integrate a 5V regulated supply to power a microcontroller or an optocoupler if needed.

Isolated gate drivers integrate ON Semiconductor’s proprietary on-chip isolation technology. Drawing on years of semiconductor process expertise, ON Semiconductor has developed a robust isolation technology which uses coreless transformers to integrate on-chip galvanic isolation in the driver itself to reduce system costs and footprint. The combination of on-chip isolation and a high-performance driver produces a robust gate-drive solution.

The first isolated drivers in an SO16 wide-body package with enhanced protection features are available today. The derivatives of the 16-pin isolated driver in SO8 narrow and wide-body packages and dual-channel isolated drivers in multiple packages are in development.

Industrial equipment manufacturers have traditionally used junction-isolated high-side and low-side drivers or half-bridge drivers. Junction isolation has severe drawbacks in half-bridge applications when handling negative voltage transients at the midpoint of the half-bridge.

ON Semiconductor’s high-side and low-side gate drivers replace the junction isolation with on-chip galvanic isolation. This solves the problems with junction isolation, enhancing system reliability and reducing costs by eliminating the extra circuit needed for handling negative transients.