Gate driver IC is drop-in replacement for EV charging stations
3 November 2016 
The single-channel gate driver IC’s pin-out and packages are compatible to the industry standard and are drop-in replacement for existing designs, says Infineon. Target applications are telecomms and industrial SMPS, DC/DC converters, PFC in EV charging stations, AC power tools, UPS, air conditioning and fans. The family also supports wireless charging applications.
The low-Ohmic output stages increase efficiency by over 30%, compared to conventional single-channel gate driver ICs, says the company.
The outputs feature what the company claims is an industry-leading reverse current robustness of 5A. This eliminates the need for protection diodes when driving MOSFETs with large parasitic source inductances typically found in TO-220 or TO-247 packages. This can save both bill of material and PCB area, say the company.
The portfolio has a -10V input robustness for a safety margin against ground-shifts when driving gate-transformers. This protects against electrical over-stress of the inputs or latch-up of the driver IC. Variants of the 1EDN EiceDriver includes devices with separate source and sink output terminals for turn-on and turn-off speed optimization, concurrently saving one external diode.