Toshiba Electronics has launched a motor control driver IC that implements a gate driver and a CPU core together for driving three-phase brushless DC (BLDC) motors and permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) more efficiently.

The TB9M003FG is the first device in Toshiba’s Smart Motor Control Driver (SmartMCD) family, designed for applications including electric pumps, fans, body control and thermal management systems in automotive. The device uses Toshiba’s advanced mixed-signal process technology, combining an Arm Cortex-M0 CPU with a vector engine co-processor and pre-drivers to control external B6 N-channel MOSFETs. For 30-1000 W BLDC motor systems, it is housed in an HTQFP48 thermal enhanced package measuring 9.0 × 9.0 mm. The device connects directly to the battery and local interconnect network (LIN) bus, has a vector engine co-processor to enable precise field-oriented control, and reduces the load on the CPU. The high-speed PWM frequency and advanced control algorithms reduce vibration and noise.

Features such as 1-shunt sensorless measurement, reduced component count and smaller program code size contribute to lower overall system costs. The operating temperature range of the AEC-Q100 (Grade 0) qualified device is -40° C to +150° C for harsh automotive environments. The SmartMCD incorporates current limiter, overcurrent, VBAT overvoltage, overtemperature protection circuitry and fault detection for undervoltage, external power MOSFET open/short failure and overheating.

Source: Toshiba Electronics