Three-phase smart gate driver with buck regulator and three current shunt amplifiers

The DRV832x family of devices, from Texas Instruments, are integrated gate drivers for three-phase applications. The devices provides three half-bridge gate drivers, each capable of driving high-side and low-side N-channel power MOSFETs. The devices generates the proper gate drive voltages using an integrated charge pump for the high-side MOSFETs and a linear regulator for the low-side MOSFETs. The smart gate drive architecture supports up to 1A source and 2A sink peak gate drive current capability. The DRV832x can operate from a single power supply and supports a wide input supply range of 6V to 60V for the gate driver and 4V to 60V for the optional buck regulator. The 6x, 3x, 1x, and independent input PWM modes allow for simple interfacing to controller circuits. Gate drive and device configuration settings are highly configurable through a SPI or hardware (H/W) interface. The devices have three, integrated low-side shunt amplifiers that allow bidirectional current sensing on all three phases of the drive stage. The devices integrate a 600mA buck regulator. A low-power sleep mode is provided to achieve low quiescent current draw by shutting down most of the internal circuitry. Internal protection functions are provided for undervoltage lockout, charge pump fault, MOSFET overcurrent, MOSFET short circuit, gate driver fault, and overtemperature. Fault conditions are indicated on the nFAULT pin with details through the device registers for SPI device variants.