Due to their numerous advantages, three-phase brushless DC (BLDC) motors are becoming the preferred choice for designing modern battery-powered motor products. However, reducing their size and weight to enhance ergonomics and extended battery life leads to design challenges.

To help designers meet the end-market objectives, Infineon Technologies has launched the fully programmable motor controllers MOTIX IMD700A and IMD701A. They come in 9 x 9 mm 2 64-pin VQFN packaging, offering the desired integration and higher power density needed in cordless power tools, gardening products, drones, e-bikes, and automated guided vehicles.

In one package, the MOTIX IMD70xA controllers combine all of the MOTIX 6EDL7141 3-phase gate driver IC features with an additional XMC1404 microcontroller (MCU), whose peripherals and specifications are optimized for motor control and drives. Infineon’s XMC1404 MCU includes a MATH coprocessor clocked at 96 MHz to enhance calculations commonly used in sensorless field-oriented control (FOC) algorithms enabling higher system performance.

To ensure best-in-class control, XMC1404 inherits most of the high-end peripherals found in the XMC4000 family, including PWM timers, position interface (POSIF), and serial communication modules (including CAN).

The motor control IC features controllability of the gate drive slew rate to minimize system EMI. IMD70xA controllers support adjustable gate drive supply voltage even at low battery voltage levels thanks to built-in high and low-side charge pumps, and other adjustable gate driver parameters. EMI management by the digital configuration of the gate drive offers an advantage, enabling optimization at the EMI test facility without needing to change any components on the board.

In addition, both products have a full suite of motor-drive-specific system protection features such as OCP, UVLO, over-temperature, and locked rotor detection, offering increased reliability and robustness.

The new devices offer integrated precision power supply and current-sense amplifiers, reducing the need for peripheral circuitry and external component count and PCB space. This leads to simplified routing and brings down BOM and assembly costs while offering improved system packaging possibilities for designers to meet the challenges of housing motor drives in small and awkwardly-shaped cavities found in such applications.

Additionally, thanks to the 6EDL7141 gate driver, they offer maximum flexibility and many highly-configurable functions able to be set from a user-friendly GUI tool, which interfaces with a PC through an SPI interface connected via a USB port.