powerZONE Products for the week of August 20, 2001
Agilent Technologies Says . . .
Agilent Technologies introduces world's smallest gate-drive
optocoupler for home appliance and low power industrial applications
Agilent HCPL-0314/3140/T251 product family targets IGBT motor
drives
Agilent Technologies Inc. announced the world's smallest gate-drive optocoupler.
The Agilent HCPL-0314 is supplied in the small-outline SO-8 package, which
makes it 60 percent smaller in size than optocouplers in the conventional
8-pin DIP. Smaller size can help reduce manufacturing costs, while delivering
uncompromising performance in the price-sensitive home appliance market.
The Agilent HCPL-0314 is one member of a new family of 0.4-amp output half-bridge gate drive optocouplers designed specifically for low-power (up to 25 A) motor-control applications, such as air conditioners and washing machines. These optocouplers are used in inverters based on insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) or power MOSFETs (metal oxide silicon field effect transistors).
The HCPL-0314 devices are superior to competing gate-drive optocouplers by offering higher common-mode rejection, lower operating current and wider operating temperature ranges (-40 degrees C to +100 degrees C) in a choice of the world's smallest package and standard 8-pin DIP.
The other members of the new optocoupler series are the 8-pin DIP packaged HCPL-3140 and HCPL-T251, which are primarily intended for low-power industrial applications. All of these optocouplers feature very low power consumption with operating current less than 3 mA (less than 5 mA for the HCPL-T251), making it possible to power the optocoupler using a bootstrap technique, which eliminates the need for costly isolated power.
These Agilent optocouplers also provide an excellent alternative to high-voltage integrated circuits (HVICs) for driving IGBTs and power MOSFETs. Compared to HVICs, Agilent optocouplers offer superior galvanic isolation that fully isolates the microcontroller from high voltage circuitry and helps protect the user from electric shock.
The HCPL-3140 and -0314 feature 10 kV/microsecond minimum common-mode
rejection at a common-mode voltage of 1.5 kV (600 V for the HCPL-T251).
The HCPL-T251 is UL 577-recognized (file no. E55361), and CSA-approved.
For the HCPL-3140 and HCPL-0314 UL, CSA and VDE approvals are pending.
analogZONE Says . . .
A reduction in package size is long overdue in this important consumer market, a very large consumer market. These devices have a GaAsP LED, connected to pins on one side of the package, optically coupled to a wafer with the power output stages, connected to the pins on the opposite side of the package. With the currents available they would most likely end up in motor control inverter applications, industrial inverters, and in switch-mode power supplies. The pending approvals call for 1 minute of isolation at 2500 Vrms, while the products are specified by 100% testing at 1181 Vpeak for 1 s, batch tested at 945 Vpeak for 60 s, and with the highest allowable overvoltage at 6000 Vpeak for 10 s.
Rail voltages for the HCPL-0314 are between 10 and 30 V, with an input current between 8 and 12 mA. The input forward voltage is 1.5 V.
All the versions will do extremely well in a market hungry for smaller
circuit boards in its appliances. As noted, the HCPL-0314 is available in
an SO-8 and is also available in a DIP-8. The HCPL-0314 is priced at $0.87,
the HCPL-3140 at $0.83 (DIP-8), and the HCPL-T251 at $0.81 (DIP-8), all
at the 10k-piece level.