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Registered Member #793
Joined: Sun May 20 2007, 06:50PM
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 35
I was looking into a gate driver with a little more oomph than the UCCs I am used to. One thing on the IXYS gate drivers has me a bit worried: http://ixdev.ixys.com/DataSheet/99061.pdf When disabling these drivers (enable = 0) the output goes to a high impedance state, the UCCs force the output to zero. The last thing I want from a gate driver in DRSSTC use is for it to set the gate floating instead of solidly turning off like I want it to. I could see putting in an extra transistor to pull the output low on a low enable signal but this seems like a pain I didn't have to worry about with the UCCs. Any thoughts on this?
Registered Member #1165
Joined: Sun Dec 09 2007, 04:41AM
Location: GA, USA
Posts: 35
Have you looked into the UC3710T ? I found it browsing on TI.com for a free gate driver, puts out 6A and works pretty well up to 500KHz (reaching limit of TL494 or my oscilloscope, don't know which) in my coil. I don't think I've seen anyone else use it..
The functional diagram on that chip shows a transistor to pull the output to ground though. Maybe it only goes high impedance when the enable pin is grounded, but operates normally otherwise?
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
Josh Johnson wrote ...
I was looking into a gate driver with a little more oomph than the UCCs I am used to. One thing on the IXYS gate drivers has me a bit worried: http://ixdev.ixys.com/DataSheet/99061.pdf When disabling these drivers (enable = 0) the output goes to a high impedance state, the UCCs force the output to zero. The last thing I want from a gate driver in DRSSTC use is for it to set the gate floating instead of solidly turning off like I want it to. I could see putting in an extra transistor to pull the output low on a low enable signal but this seems like a pain I didn't have to worry about with the UCCs. Any thoughts on this?
A 14A driver over the existing 9A driver is not much of an improvement to justifying going to a new chip / package. If you want some extra oomph without having to worry about the enable functionality of the IXYS driver, then just parallel (2) UCC drivers.
Registered Member #793
Joined: Sun May 20 2007, 06:50PM
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 35
Just do an "enable" with an AND or NAND circuit so that you force the output low during the "disabled" time.
That is a simple solution. I wanted an enable and was stuck on using the pin on the chip called enable. Sometimes you overlook the easy answer.
A 14A driver over the existing 9A driver is not much of an improvement to justifying going to a new chip / package. If you want some extra oomph without having to worry about the enable functionality of the IXYS driver, then just parallel (2) UCC drivers
Good point Dan. There was a few other thing that I liked about the IXYS driver though. One, you can get it in the TO-220-5 package which allows for better heat dissapation, alought this most likely isn't a issue in DRSSTC use unless something is going wrong. Two, the part allows for much higher drive voltages, up to 35V, so I could use a 1:1:1 GDT for a better gate drive signal than a 1:2:2. Maybe this isn't a big deal, however, just something I've read and never tried for myself. Three, I could subsitiue the 14A TO-220-5 for the 30A TO-220-5 http://ixdev.ixys.com/DataSheet/99045.pdf if I got really power hungry. Although if I needed 30A gate drivers I'd probably be looking into isolated power supplies to directly drive the gates without a GDT.
So after this little debate with myself I think I'll stick to UCCs and parallel if I need too.
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IXYS Gate Driver Weirdness
