AN-6069
APPLICATION NOTE
In both these circuits, there is a voltage transient that may
last for 50-100ns as the current increases to the limits of the
driver. A compact layout using surface mount components
keeps the loop area small to minimize parasitic inductance.
The two previous circuits require a unique surface mount
layout. It is possible to evaluate driver current capability by
connecting a relatively large capacitive load on the output of
a driver with the simple circuit shown in Figure 21.
Figure 22. Compound Driver Current Source
Waveforms
Figure 22 shows the leading spike across the inductance
introduced by the wire loop inserted in the circuit to enable
use of a current probe. If the wire loop is removed and the
0.1µF surface mount capacitor is installed in a layout with
minimal parasitic inductance, the waveforms shown in
Figure 23 are obtained. In short intervals where the voltage
waveform is approximately linear, the basic relation is:
Figure 21. "Large" Load Test Circuit
dV
⎛
⎜
⎞
⎟
For a starting point, CLOAD is chosen to be 100 times larger
than the load used for rise and fall time measurements and
the input is driven with a 1kHz square wave. On typical
datasheets, 2A drivers are specified with 1nF load for the
rise and fall time specifications, so CLOAD would be selected
to be 0.1µF. This relatively large load prevents the output
from changing rapidly, allowing the driver output current to
reach its internal limiting value. A current probe, IPRB, can
be used to monitor the output current along with the output
voltage VOUT on an oscilloscope. This enables plotting the
output current available at the corresponding output voltage.
Bench comparisons have shown that the current
OUT
I = CLOAD
⋅
(16)
dT
⎝
⎠
can be applied to provide an estimate of the current.
measurement obtained using this method agrees closely with
that obtained using the clamp circuits in Figure 19 and
Figure 20. In addition, the slower current rise and fall times
allow the current measurements to be made comfortably
within the bandwidth limits of a current probe.
Figure 23. Compound Driver Current Estimation
Figure 22 shows the waveforms obtained using the test
circuit shown in Figure 21 to evaluate a 2A sink / 1.5A
source driver (FAN3227C) with a compound output stage.
When the driver input, VIN, goes high, there is a transient
glitch on the VOUT trace as the output current quickly
increases to 3A through the inductance of the current probe
loop. After approximately 70ns, the current has reached its
peak value and the voltage spike across the parasitic
inductances vanishes. With VOUT = 6V, the output current is
measured as 1.5A (source current).
The oscillogram in Figure 23 allows calculation of current
during the cursor interval as:
1.131V
40.6ns
⎛
⎜
⎞
⎟
I = 0.1µF⋅
= 2.8A
(17)
⎝
⎠
providing close agreement with the peak value seen in the
OUT trace in Figure 22. A similar calculation around VOUT
I
=
6V provides a current estimation of 1.5A, nearly identical to
the result obtained with direct current measurement using a
current probe. The close agreement between the current
measurement techniques using the large load helps develop
confidence in the results obtained.
© 2007 Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation
Rev. 1.0.3 • 1/6/10
www.fairchildsemi.com
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