7.1 Overview

The DRV8306 device is an integrated 6-V to 38-V gate driver for three-phase motor-drive applications. The device reduces system component count, cost, and complexity by integrating three independent half-bridge gate drivers, charge pump, and linear low-dropout (LDO) regulator for the high-side and low-side gate-driver supply voltages. A hardware interface (H/W) option allows for configuring the most commonly used settings through fixed external resistors.

The gate drivers support external N-channel high-side and low-side power MOSFETs and can drive up to 150-mA source and 300-mA sink peak currents with a 15-mA average output current. The high-side gate drive supply voltage is generated using a doubler charge-pump architecture that regulates the VCP output to V_VM + 10 V. The low-side gate drive supply voltage is generated using a linear regulator from the VM power supply that regulates to 10 V. A smart gate-drive architecture provides the ability to adjust the output gate-drive current strength allowing for the gate driver to control the power MOSFET V_DS switching speed. This allows for the removal of external gate drive resistors and diodes reducing BOM component count, cost, and PCB area. The architecture also uses an internal state machine to protect against gate-drive short-circuit events, control the half-bridge dead time, and protect against dV/dt parasitic turnon of the external power MOSFET.

The DRV8306 device also integrates three Hall comparators for rotor position sensing using the Hall elements. This input is used for electronically commutating the BLDC motor in trapezoidal mode. This device also has a 3.3-V LDO regulator which can be powered up to loads up to 30 mA.

In addition to the high level of device integration, the DRV8306 device provides a wide range of integrated protection features. These features include power-supply undervoltage lockout (UVLO), charge-pump undervoltage lockout (CPUV), V_DS and V_SENSE overcurrent monitoring (OCP), gate-driver short-circuit detection (GDF), and overtemperature shutdown (OTSD). Fault events are indicated by the nFAULT pin.

The DRV8306 device is available in a 0.4-mm pin pitch, VQFN surface-mount package. The VQFN package size is 4-mm × 4-mm.