“The integrated current sense and diagnostics features are key for enabling functional safety without adding complicated circuitry or additional components to any system’s design,” according to Trinamic founder Michael Randt. “This allows engineers to increase efficiency by 30 percent with minimal effort.”
Called TMC6140-LA, it offers 500mA or 1A gate driving (digital setting) for 5 to 30V battery-powered applications, such as power tools where voltages can drop below 10V. Three phase permanent magnet synchronous and brushless dc motors can be driven.
Designed to work from a single voltage rail, an internal 3.3V switching regulator is included to power the host microcontroller. Working with an external Inductor, it can provide 100mA using a built-in Schottky, or more with an external Schottky. Three more external Schottkys can be added to increase the duty-cycle capability of the high-side output mosfets.
For operation at 15V and below (forbidden above), extra components can be connected to the 3.3V regulator switching node to create a charge pump that ensures external power switching mosfets continue to get 10V gate drive.
Control is over a UART-style bus and packaging is 36pin QFN.
Evaluation help comes through the TMC6140-EVAL board and TMC6140-EVAL-KIT kit
Trinamic is now owned by Maxim. The TMC6140-LA gate driver product page is here
The clearly-written data sheet is worth a look, if only for the unspectacular but informative figure 1 (page 4) which uses simple labels to indicate various component configuration options.