SLUSCV8A April 2017 – February 2018 UCC20225
PRODUCTION DATA.
A VDDA capacitor, also referred to as a bootstrap capacitor in bootstrap power supply configurations, allows for gate drive current transients up to 6 A, and needs to maintain a stable gate drive voltage for the power transistor.
The total charge needed per switching cycle can be estimated with
where
Therefore, the absolute minimum CBoot requirement is:
where
In practice, the value of CBoot is greater than the calculated value. This allows for the capacitance shift caused by the DC bias voltage and for situations where the power stage would otherwise skip pulses due to load transients. Therefore, it is recommended to include a safety-related margin in the CBoot value and place it as close to the VDD and VSS pins as possible. A 50-V 1-µF capacitor is chosen in this example.
To further lower the AC impedance for a wide frequency range, it is recommended to have bypass capacitor with a low capacitance value, in this example a 100 nF, in parallel with CBoot to optimize the transient performance.
NOTE
Too large CBOOT can be detrimental. CBOOT may not be charged within the first few cycles and VBOOT could stay below UVLO. As a result, the high-side FET will not follow input signal commands for several cycles. Also during initial CBOOT charging cycles, the bootstrap diode has highest reverse recovery current and losses.