New Industry Products

LED Driver with 800V Startup and Sensing Circuitry

February 13, 2019 by Scott McMahan

STMicroelectronics reports that the company's new LED driver chip combines its LED-control know-how with advanced power technologies. The HVLED001B is the second generation of ST's LED driver family containing high-voltage startup and sensing circuitry that simplifies connection to the ac line. (See block diagram above).

The company says that the LED driver chip enables future luminaires to save more energy and deliver better user experiences. According to ST, the HVLED001B driver simplifies the designing of LED-lighting modules, maximizes energy efficiency at all dimming levels, and ensures smoother brightness control.

ST further says that lighting innovator TCI of Italy, a leading ST customer, has already designed future products that integrate the new chip to increase energy savings, safety, and usability.

The driver chip offers accurate line and load regulation over a wide range to ensure constant output voltage or output current. It provides constant output voltage regulation, with no need of an optocoupler, to ensure voltage remains below recognized 60V safe limit, thereby improving the application robustness. The chip delivers power conversion efficiency of above 90%.

A technical spokesperson for TCI said, "ST's new LED driver enabled us to achieve our high-performance targets, leveraging built-in features that simplify design and reduce the bill of materials. LED power-up is extremely fast, taking less than 0.4 seconds, and efficiency remains very high even at the lower dimming levels where conventional drivers can lose their edge."

Matteo Lo Presti, Executive Vice President, Analog Sub-Group General Manager in ST's Analog, MEMS and Sensors Group, added, "As well as further improving energy efficiency under all operating conditions, the latest luminaires must support smart-grid management and power quality by increasing power factor and reducing harmonic distortion. The HVLED001B makes these targets achievable, at the same time as supporting improved start-up performance and dimming accuracy."

The HVLED001B is in production now, housed in the familiar and compact SSOP10 package, and available from $0.687 for orders of 1000 pieces.

Features

  • Quasi-resonant (QR) topology
  • Primary side regulation of output voltage
  • Direct optocoupler connection for current loop regulation with feedback disconnection detection
  • 800V high-voltage startup
  • High power factor and low THD in universal range
  • High efficiency and output stability in wide voltage and current range
  • Extremely low standby power at no load condition
  • Programmable frequency foldback
  • Integrated input voltage detection for high power factor capability and protection triggering
  • Latch-free device guarantee by smart auto-reload timer (ART)
  • 0% to 10% and PWM dimming compatible
  • Remote control pin