Clicker extension board enables gate driver evaluation in BLDC motor applications

Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH has collaborated with MIKROE to develop Clicker 4 Inverter Shield 2, the latest addition to the Clicker 4 series of extension boards. The improved inverter shield has been developed to allow convenient evaluation of Toshiba's recently released TB67Z833SFTG gate driver for three-phase BLDC motors in consumer and industrial applications.

The gate driver includes a built-in circuit with the ability to drive three phases of high-side and low-side N-channel MOSFETs. It also supports an adjustable source (10mA to 1A peak) and sink current (20mA to 2A peak), depending on ambient temperature and power supply voltage. This gate driver can operate from supply voltages (VM) ranging from 8V to 75V. The combination of wide operating voltages and currents suits various use-cases.

The devices of this IC family feature either SPI or hardware control interface for quick and easy configuration, while its low standby current (1µA max) helps to expand the time duration between recharges for battery-driven applications. It incorporates integrated undervoltage lockout and thermal shutdown protection features for safety, while gate drive abnormality detection and overcurrent protection functions enhance overall system reliability by protecting the external MOSFETs.

The company has also adapted the current measurement circuitry on Clicker 4 Inverter Shield 2 to deliver an improved SNR, which can be optimised by reducing the maximum output current. Also featuring on this extension board is Toshiba's TC75W58 dual comparator, which can function from a single voltage source with low current consumption (20μA typ.). Clicker 4 Inverter Shield 2 is based on Toshiba's 100V SSM6K819R low RDS(ON) power MOSFETs, which handle the growing demand for highly efficient MOSFETs in smaller package sizes.

Combining the Clicker 4 Inverter Shield 2 and the MIKROE Clicker 4 development board for Toshiba's M4K MCU presents a convenient and cost-effective solution for experimenting with various consumer and industrial three-phase BLDC motor control applications.

The Clicker 4 Inverter Shield 2 is supported by the recently updated MCU Motor Studio software 4.0, which now provides a free-run digital storage oscilloscope for extensive real-time parameter logging and caters to all bare-metal configurations. Also, it introduces Shift-2 PWM support, improving precision in vector engine-based hardware control. MMS 4.0 is available for download from the company's website.