STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor company, has launched the integrated gate drivers 'STDRIVE102H' (single shunt control) and 'STDRIVE102BH' (three shunt control) for driving three-phase brushless motors (BLDC).

Both products have a 6–50 V operating voltage and a small QFN (5 × 5 mm/6 × 6 mm) package, increasing design freedom for wireless home appliances, industrial mobile robots, electric bicycles, and drive systems.

Both drivers can adjust the gate current and switching slew rate with only two analog pins, allowing designers to optimize external MOSFET performance without gate resistors.

It also supports low-current standby mode to extend the usage time of battery-based applications.

The biggest feature is that it supports 100% PWM duty cycle operation by building in a charge pump circuit.

Thanks to this, high-efficiency control is possible without on-time limitation of the high-side MOSFET, and both the high-side and low-side receive the same gate-source voltage, ensuring balanced power stage operation.

The protective function has also been greatly strengthened. In addition to basic undervoltage lockout (UVLO) and thermal shutdown, it provides double safety in overcurrent situations by monitoring the drain-source voltage (VDS) of the high and low side MOSFETs. It immediately outputs an error signal when an error occurs, thereby increasing system reliability.

External power management is also simple. A 12V/3.3V LDO is installed inside the driver to stably supply power to the low-side circuit and analog front end (AFE), reducing the number of external components and saving board area.

ST also introduced the EVLDRIVE102H and EVLDRIVE102BH evaluation boards to lower the barrier to entry for early development.

The board has inputs for practicing FOC (Field-Oriented Control), 6-step drive, back-EMF detection, and Hall sensor-based control, and can be directly interfaced with a microcontroller via the STM32 Nucleo header.

The X-CUBE-MCSDK software kit provides a one-stop solution for everything from motor parameter settings to code generation and tuning.

Pricing starts at $1.20 per unit for both the STDRIVE102H and 102BH in quantities of 1,000.

An ST official said, “The two products will simultaneously realize design simplification and performance improvement in the next-generation cordless power tool and e-mobility markets where miniaturization, high efficiency, and low cost are highly demanded.”