SLUSCJ9E June 2016 – December 2021 UCC21520
PRODUCTION DATA
The external gate driver resistors, RON/ROFF, are used to:
As mentioned in Section 9.3.4, the UCC21520 has a pull-up structure with a P-channel MOSFET and an additional pull-up N-channel MOSFET in parallel. The combined peak source current is 4 A. Therefore, the peak source current can be predicted with:
where
In this example:
Therefore, the high-side and low-side peak source current is 2.4 A and 2.5 A respectively. Similarly, the peak sink current can be calculated with:
where
In this example,
Therefore, the high-side and low-side peak sink current is 3.6 A and 3.7 A respectively.
Importantly, the estimated peak current is also influenced by PCB layout and load capacitance. Parasitic inductance in the gate driver loop can slow down the peak gate drive current and introduce overshoot and undershoot. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that the gate driver loop should be minimized. On the other hand, the peak source/sink current is dominated by loop parasitics when the load capacitance (CISS) of the power transistor is very small (typically less than 1 nF), because the rising and falling time is too small and close to the parasitic ringing period.
Failure to control OUTx voltage to less than the Absolute Maximum Ratings in the datasheet (including transients) may result in permanent damage to the device in certain cases. To reduce excessive gate ringing, it is recommended to use a ferrite bead near the gate of the FET. External clamping diodes can also be added in the case of extended overshoot/undershoot, in order to clamp the OUTx voltage to the VDDx and VSSx voltages.