Fast 120V half-bridge driver for automotive

Texas Instruments is claiming a half-bridge driver speed record with a 120V automotive-grade half-bridge gate driver with 15ns propagation delay and delay matching of 1ns for 12V to 48V dc-dc supplies.

TI UCC27201A – 120V half-bridge driver for automotive

Rise and fall times of the UCC27201A-Q1, as it is known, are 7ns.

It is an improved version of the earlier UCC27200 and UCC27201 drivers which can withstand -18V on its HS pin (see diagram) to reject noise. “The best negative-voltage handling at the switched-node pin creates the ability to tolerate noise, causing virtually no malfunctions in the electronic system,” according to TI. It is “the only automotive gate driver to offer negative voltage handling capability on the high-side pin”.

An integrated 120V bootstrap diode eliminates the need for an external one to generate the high-side gate bias voltage.

The 1ns matching mentioned above applies to low-side and high-side gate drivers turn-on and turn-off, allowing operation at hundreds of kHz.

TI is expecting it to be used in half-bridge, full-bridge, two-switch forward and active clamp forward converters.

For development, it suggests combining the chip with digital controllers such as the UCD3138, C2000 LaunchPad development kits, MSP430 microcontrollers or analogue controllers. There are TINA-TI and PSpice models.