ADP3110
THEORY OF OPERATION
on. To complete the cycle, Q1 is switched off by pulling the gate
down to the voltage at the SW pin. When the low-side
MOSFET, Q2, turns on, the SW pin is pulled to ground. This
allows the bootstrap capacitor to charge up to VCC again.
The ADP3110 is a dual MOSFET driver optimized for driving
two N-channel MOSFETs in a synchronous buck converter
topology. A single PWM input signal is all that is required to
properly drive the high-side and the low-side MOSFETs. Each
driver is capable of driving a 3 nF load at speeds up to 500 kHz.
The high-side driver’s output is in phase with the PWM input.
When the driver is disabled, the high-side gate is held low.
A more detailed description of the ADP3110 and its features
follows. Refer to Figure 1.
OVERLAP PROTECTION CIRCUIT
The overlap protection circuit prevents both of the main power
switches, Q1 and Q2, from being on at the same time. This
prevents shoot-through currents from flowing through both
power switches, and the associated losses that can occur during
their on/off transitions. The overlap protection circuit
accomplishes this by adaptively controlling the delay from the
Q1 turn off to the Q2 turn on, and by internally setting the
delay from the Q2 turn off to the Q1 turn on.
LOW-SIDE DRIVER
The low-side driver is designed to drive a ground-referenced
N-channel MOSFET. The bias to the low-side driver is
internally connected to the VCC supply and PGND.
When the ADP3110 is enabled, the driver’s output is
180 degrees out of phase with the PWM input. When the
ADP3110 is disabled, the low-side gate is held low.
HIGH-SIDE DRIVER
To prevent the overlap of the gate drives during the Q1 turn off
and the Q2 turn on, the overlap circuit monitors the voltage at
the SW pin. When the PWM input signal goes low, Q1 begins
to turn off (after propagation delay). Before Q2 can turn on, the
overlap protection circuit makes sure that SW has first gone
high and then waits for the voltage at the SW pin to fall from
The high-side driver is designed to drive a floating N-channel
MOSFET. The bias voltage for the high-side driver is developed
by an external bootstrap supply circuit, which is connected
between the BST and SW pins.
The bootstrap circuit comprises a diode, D1, and bootstrap
capacitor, CBST1. CBST2 and RBST are included to reduce the high-
side gate drive voltage and limit the switch node slew rate
(referred to as a Boot-Snap™ circuit, see the Application
Information section for more details). When the ADP3110 is
starting up the SW pin is at ground; therefore the bootstrap
capacitor charges up to VCC through D1. When the PWM
input goes high, the high-side driver begins to turn on the high-
side MOSFET, Q1, by pulling charge out of CBST1 and CBST2. As
Q1 turns on, the SW pin rises up to VIN, forcing the BST pin to
VIN to 1 V. Once the voltage on the SW pin has fallen to 1 V, Q2
begins turn on. If the SW pin had not gone high first, then the
Q2 turn on is delayed by a fixed 150 ns. By waiting for the
voltage on the SW pin to reach 1 V or for the fixed delay time,
the overlap protection circuit ensures that Q1 is off before Q2
turns on, regardless of variations in temperature, supply voltage,
input pulse width, gate charge, and drive current. If SW does
not go below 1 V after 190 ns, DRVL turns on. This can occur if
the current flowing in the output inductor is negative and is
flowing through the high-side MOSFET body diode.
V
IN + VC(BST), which is enough gate-to-source voltage to hold Q1
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