New motor gate driver IC enables easy migration from 12V to 48V systems

Infineon Technologies AG has introduced the MOTIX TLE9140EQW gate driver IC for brushless DC motors, targeting the demanding 24/48V market. The TLE9140 is tailored for automotive motor control applications featuring higher voltage requirements from 24V up to a maximum of 72V, where higher system reliability and faster switching behaviour are necessary. The IC is the ideal complement to the company's MOTIX MCU TLE987x and TLE989x 32-bit motor control SoC solutions but is also suitable as a 48V BLDC driver with common MCUs on the market. Typical applications include pumps, fans, windshield wipers, HVAC modules, and e-compressors. Also, the TLE9140 is applied as a three-phase motor gate driver for applications in commercial, construction, and agricultural vehicles as well as in light EVs such as eBikes, eScooters or motorcycles.

"Our new motor gate driver IC allows customers to easily scale their existing 12V MOTIX TLE987x and TLE989x motor control designs to 24V or 48V systems," says Andreas Doll, senior vice president, and general manager Smart Power at Infineon. "The TLE9140EQW enables the reuse of hardware and software designs, allowing our customers to shorten their time-to-market and optimise their development costs when moving to 24/48V systems."

The gate driver IC provides functional safety according to ISO 26262 ASIL B. It is housed in a small TS-DSO-32 package. The IC offers a high voltage capability of up to 110V, a gate driver capability of ~230nC/MOSFET up to 20kHz, and SPI communication. It has an active low-side (LS) freewheeling function during V SM overvoltage (OV) and a wide range of important diagnostic and protection functions such as timeout-watchdog, drain-source monitoring, overvoltage, undervoltage, cross-current and over-temperature protection as well as off-state diagnostics.

Also, the TLE9140 includes the company's patented gate shaping function, an adaptive MOSFET control that can compensate for fluctuations in the system's MOSFET parameters. It automatically adjusts the gate current to attain the desired switching behaviour. This allows the system to be optimised for EMI by slower slew rates while minimising power dissipation through shorter dead times and shorter rise/fall times.

The company's MOTIX motor control ICs are accompanied by software and tools to accelerate the evaluation and design-in process. The TLE9140 evaluation board is user-friendly and allows rapid evaluation and prototyping. Also, it provides a configuration wizard and a device driver for the TLE9140 that supplies a simple API for generating the control frames for the external bridge driver via SPI. Both are available free of charge.