ADuM4223
Production
The ADuM3223/ADuM4223 are 4 A isolated, half-bridge gate
drivers that employ the Analog Devices, Inc., iCoupler® technology to provide independent and...
Datasheet
ADuM4223 on Analog.com
Hello all,
I am currently using two ADuM4223C half-bridge drivers in a permanent-magnet synchronous motor power driver. The ADuM4223Cs are employed to control an NMOS H-bridge, as shown in the simplified schematic below. All four MOSFETs have their own isolated +9V/-4V supplies. The bus voltage ranges as high as 350VDC, and output current is about 12A maximum.
We are experiencing some very puzzling behavior at high H-bridge output voltages and currents. The output current will occasionally drop very suddenly to zero, and remain there for a period of time ranging from 100's of microseconds to several milliseconds. See the image below. In this plot, current goes from almost 8A down to exactly 0A in one 66.67 microsecond frame. The only realistic explanation is that the ADuM4223s suddenly turn off all four MOSFETs simultaneously, completely cutting off motor phase current.
The question is, in the absence of timing/logic errors on the input lines, why would the ADuM4223s both suddenly decide to drop their outputs to -4V? I can think of a few explanations, perhaps you can chime in with your thoughts:
On thing is clear, there is quite a bit of noise all over the circuit. Just attaching oscilloscope leads to certain sensitive parts of the circuit is enough to cause failures and faults!
Hello sschaefer,
I've forwarded your question along to our application engineer however he is out on holiday until Monday, December 1st. Wanted to make you aware that there might be a delayed response here - I apologize.
Rachel
In general it would be good to have the supplies and the DIS-signal scope plots for the moment this happens.
Thanks for your feedback and good to know you found the root-cause.
Well, it seems I may have identified the root cause. It was likely the DIS (disable) signal that was responsible for this behavior.
There is a latch circuit, not shown, which is responsible for generating the DIS signal in the event of a bus overcurrent fault. The original designer wanted this circuit to operate very quickly, so he fed the clock line of a SN74LVC1G175 flip-flop with the overcurrent signal. Bad idea. In such a noisy environment, we were continually getting false triggers, so I disabled the latch by wiring the clock input to ground.
Evidently, the PCB trace and jumper wire combined had enough inductance that we were still getting brief false-triggers at high output levels. I removed the flip-flop IC entirely from the circuit, and haven't seen any evidence of this "current drop-out" behavior any more. Unfortunately, there are other high-power issues that are leading to the failure of the MOSFETs. To be continued...
Moral of the story: don't design a circuit to be as sensitive as possible. Design it to be just sensitive enough to get the job done!