Smart gate drivers for three-phase BLDC applications

The Texas Instruments DRV835x are three-phase smart gate drivers. These highly integrated gate drivers are intended for three-phase BLDC motor applications, including FOC, sinusoidal current control, and trapezoidal current control. The company's drivers use SGD architecture to minimise the number of external components that are typically needed for MOSFET slew rate control and protection circuits. The SGD architecture also optimises dead time to stop shoot-through conditions, affords flexibility in decreasing EMI by MOSFET slew rate control, and guards against gate short circuit conditions through VGS monitors. The drivers offer optional integrated current shunt amplifiers to support different motor control schemes and a buck regulator to power the gate driver or external controller. A strong gate pulldown circuit helps stop unwanted dV/dt parasitic gate turn on events. The drivers are supported by the DRV8353Rx-EVM driver evaluation modules. The evaluation modules offer individual DC bus and phase voltage sense as well as individual low-side current shunt amplifiers, making it perfect for sensorless BLDC algorithms.