New gate driver provides power efficiency and increased system up-time

The driver IC is intended for use in switch-mode power supplies within industrial communication systems for solar power inverters, motor drives, electric cars, energy storage systems, uninterrupted power supplies, data farms and high-power/high-efficiency power supplies.

Many switch-mode power supply applications are adopting wide-bandgap silicon carbide (SiC) transistors to improve power efficiency and transistor reliability. However, the high switching frequency incurs transients that generate noise, which either disrupts operations or requires extensive mitigation.

The MAX22701E offers the industry's highest common-mode transient immunity (CMTI) of 300kV/µs typical to deliver industry-leading reliability. CMTI is up to three times higher than the closest competitor, which results in increased system uptime. Best-in-class driver propagation specs (35ns typical which is two times lower propagation delay than the closest competitor) and propagation delay matching between the high-side and low-side gate drivers (5ns maximum which is 5x lower than the closest competitor) helps to reduce the transistor's dead time. This, in turn, improves power efficiency up to four percentage points. In the 90 percent efficiency range, every one percentage point in efficiency results in about a ten percent improvement in power loss. For example, improving efficiency from 90 to 94% results in an approximately 30 to 40% reduction in wasted power (6 versus 10 points of wasted power.) The MAX22701E is available in an 8-pin narrow body SOIC package (3.90mm x 4.90mm) with an extended temperature range of -40° to 125°C.

Key Advantages

• Reduced Energy Loss: 5x lower part-to-part propagation delay matching (5ns maximum) significantly reduces dead time and energy losses.
• Increased Uptime: Up to 3x higher CMTI (300kV/µs typical) minimizes large common-mode transients between the input and output to increase uptime in noisy environments.

"As our customers adopt SiC technology to deliver smaller and more efficient power supply systems, we enable maximum system efficiency with increased system uptime," said Timothy Leung, director, Industrial and Healthcare Business Unit at Maxim Integrated.