SLOA328 December   2022 DRV8262 , DRV8462

PRODUCTION DATA  

  1.   Abstract
  2.   Trademarks
  3. 1Introduction
    1. 1.1 Gate Driver
    2. 1.2 Integrated FET Driver
  4. 2Integrated FET Driver vs. Gate Driver
    1. 2.1 Solution Size
    2. 2.2 External Bill of Materials
    3. 2.3 Thermal Performance
  5. 3Summary
  6. 4References

2.2 External Bill of Materials

Motor drivers require external components like capacitors, resistors, and diodes connected from various pins of the motor driver to FETs, voltage supply, or ground. Regardless of whether it is an integrated FET driver or a gate driver, passive components surrounding the driver are necessary for certain bypassing, protection and control features.

As gate drivers have their FETs located externally, more passive components are expected to be present - leading to an increase in the external bill of materials. The following points must be considered by a system designer:

  • An increase in size and external bill of materials comes with an increase in price.
  • Too many components outside of the driver package makes the solution less reliable due to the possibility of any component failing.

Table 2-3 shows the comparison between the external BOM of DRV8262 and DRV8701.

Table 2-3 BOM Count Comparison Between DRV8262 and DRV8701
Device DRV8262 DRV8701
Number of Resistors 2 9
Number of Capacitors 8 13
Number of MOSFETs 0 4
Total number of Components 10 26

Table 2-4 shows the comparison between the external BOM of DRV8462 and DRV8711.

Table 2-4 BOM count comparison between DRV8462 and DRV8711
Device DRV8462 DRV8711
Number of Resistors 2 14
Number of Capacitors 8 7
Number of MOSFETs 0 8
Total number of Components 10 29

As is evident, integrated FET drivers require far lesser number of external components, leading to lower external BOM cost and higher reliability.