A motor driver with an integrated FET means the power stage FETs are included inside the driver package, as Figure 1-2 shows. Integrated FETs minimize the design effort needed to get started with a motor drive application, as the FET characteristics are already selected to match the requirements of the specified motor current.

The integrated FET topology has been traditionally used for low to moderate motor current applications - for example, brushed-DC motors up to 10 A peak current and stepper motors up to 3 A full-scale current. The maximum current was primarily limited by the lowest possible on resistance of the FETs that could be integrated in the same monolithic die - it was difficult to integrate on resistance less than 300 mΩ if the voltage rating of the driver was close to 40 V or higher. For applications that needed higher currents, external FET gate drivers were used.

However, with recent innovations in analog process technologies, IC design and packaging technologies, latest integrated FET drivers from Texas Instruments are now capable of driving significantly higher current at a higher supply voltage. This is done by reducing the on resistance of the integrated FETs to 100 mΩ or lower. As shown in Table 1-1, several high-power integrated FET motor drivers for industrial and automotive applications have been introduced. These integrated FET motor drivers can replace external FET gate drivers which were the preferred solution for high power motor driver systems so far.