New Industry Products

Driver with Coreless Transformer Technology for Applications up to 1200 V

November 25, 2013 by Jeff Shepard

At this year's SPS IPC Drives trade fair for electrical automation, Infineon Technologies AG presented its new 1EDI EiceDRIVER™ compact single-channel gate driver for applications with isolation voltages of up to 1200V. The galvanically-isolated driver components are based on the Coreless Transformer Technology developed by Infineon, which enables output currents of up to 6A on separate output pins. The basic system includes UVLO (under voltage lockout) for IGBTs and MOFETs as well as an active shutdown in the event that the driver is not connected to the power supply. The 1EDI drivers are supplied in a compact DSO-8 housing and can be used at ambient temperatures of up to 125°C in applications such as industrial drives, inverters, welding equipment, induction cooking appliances and power supplies for servers or telecommunications.

“With the 1EDI driver IC, we are further expanding our extensive range of driver ICs – which are differentiated according to applications as well as functionality – into the compact area. As with the 2EDL Compact, the new driver component is also aiming at the mass market both in the consumer as well as the industrial area,” says Oliver Hellmund from Infineon, who is responsible for marketing the EiceDRIVER. “The 1EDI Compact stands for exceptionally robust and simultaneously very secure control of high-voltage power semiconductors. Our compact driver range now covers all applications for power semiconductors with functional isolation.” The 1EDI driver ICs are offered in eight variants that can be operated at up to voltages of 1200 volts and are designed for use in applications with either IGBTs or MOSFETs.

The new EiceDRIVER™ components are the first driver ICs to achieve a value of 100kV/µs for the CMTI (common mode transient immunity). Both the MOSFET as well as one IGBT driver supply 6A of output current. The MOSFET driver is optimized for use with power semiconductors that are based on CoolMOS™ technology. Due to lower induction loss, the EiceDRIVER™ thus enables an additional gain in efficiency of 0.5 percent with the latest generation CoolMOS C7. Further IGBT only variants with 4A, 2A and 0.5A are in development. These five variants have a separate output for charging and discharging the gate. An additional three variants are structured to limit the gate voltage (active Miller clamp) and provide 3-, 2- and 1-A of output current.

In addition to the compact class, the EiceDRIVERâ„¢ family also includes the EiceDRIVERâ„¢ Enhanced class which offers increased functionality both for the industrial as well as partially the consumer sectors. Samples of the 1EDI EiceDRIVERâ„¢ for MOSFETs and IGBTs with 6A of output current are available now; the corresponding Customer Evaluation Board can be ordered as of January 2014. Production start for both these variants will presumably begin in March 2014. The other drivers are intended to be available as samples in the first quarter of 2014; production is planned to begin in the second quarter of 2014.