Highly-integrated motor controller and three-phase gate driver

Infineon Technologies AG has released the fully programmable motor controllers MOTIX IMD700A and IMD701A. They are supplied in 9mm x 9mm2 64-pin VQFN packaging, providing the desired integration and higher power density required in cordless power tools, gardening products, e-bikes, drones, and automated guided vehicles.

In one package, the controllers combine all of the MOTIX 6EDL7141 three-phase gate driver IC features with an extra XMC1404 MCU, whose peripherals and specifications are optimised for motor control and drives. Its XMC1404 MCU incorporates a MATH coprocessor clocked at 96MHz to enhance calculations commonly used in sensorless FOC algorithms allowing higher system performance. Furthermore, to ensure best-in-class control, the devices inherit most high-end peripherals in the XMC4000 family, including PWM timers, POSIF, and serial communication modules (including CAN).

The motor control IC provides controllability of the gate drive slew rate to minimise system EMI. These controllers support adjustable gate drive supply voltage even at low battery voltage levels due to built-in high- and low-side charge pumps and many other adjustable gate driver parameters. EMI management by the digital configuration of the gate drive provides a major advantage, allowing optimisation at the EMI test facility with no need to change any components on the board. Also, the products come with a full suite of motor-drive-specific system protection features, including OCP, UVLO, over-temperature, and locked rotor detection, providing increased reliability and robustness.

The new devices provide integrated precision power supply and current-sense amplifiers, further lowering the requirement for peripheral circuitry and, therefore, external component count and PCB space. This leads to simplified routing and lowers BOM and assembly costs while providing improved system packaging possibilities for designers to satisfy the challenges of housing motor drives in small and awkwardly-shaped cavities found in these applications. On top of that, thanks to the 6EDL7141 gate driver, they provide maximum flexibility, and many highly-configurable functions can be set from a user-friendly GUI tool, which interfaces with a PC via an SPI interface connected through a USB port.