Smart insulated-gate-transistor driver with built-in current limit in a small, inexpensive five-pin one-watt package

A smart insulated gate transistor (IGT) driver IC featuring thermal protection, current limiting, and first-pulse wake-up has been developed by TOKO, Inc. The driver IC is available in a SOT89-5, a five-pin surface-mounted package capable of up to one watt of power dissipation. In a proprietary circuit configuration offered freely to the user of the driver, a capacitor and resistor can be configured to virtually eliminate the spike across the current sense resistor originating from the capacitive feedthrough of the drive signal. Due to its low quiescent current and first-pulse wake-up feature, the device can be used in self-biased power supplies. The IC's high-speed cycle-by-cycle current-limiting capability, and the fact that there is no need for the customary RC spike filter, virtually eliminate the short-circuit-current runaway problem characteristic to many current-mode controlled converters. The IC is eminently suited to provide supplementary overload protection in voltage-mode controlled converters, too. Besides the SOT89-5, the device is offered in the DIP-8 and SOSF packages.