UCC1837
UCC2837
UCC3837
APPLICATION INFORMATION (cont.)
For the application circuit shown in Fig. 1, the voltage at
the error amplifier output will increase quickly by 400mV
due to the 40µA current through R
. The error am-
COMP
plifier will then slew at approximately 50mV per micro-
second as the 40µA charges C
.
COMP
From the IRL2203N data sheet, the typical required gate
voltage at room temperature, to deliver 5A is 2.6V. The
threshold for the device is approximately 1.5V. From the
gate charge curve for the IRL2203N, approximately 7nC
charge is required to change the gate voltage from 1.5V
to 2.6V. With 1.5mA gate drive current, the required time
to charge the gate is therefore 4.7µs.
UDG-97046
Overcurrent Protection and Thermal Management:
Figure 3. MOSFET turn-on characteristics.
Overcurrent protection is provided via the UCC3837’s in-
ternal current amplifier and overcurrent comparator. If at
any time the voltage across the current sense resistor
crosses the comparator threshold, the UCC3837 begins
to modulate the output driver at a 3% duty cycle. During
the 3% on time, if the current forces 140mV across the
sense amplifier, the UCC3837 will enter a constant out-
put current mode. Fig. 4 illustrates the cyclical retry of
the UCC3837 under fault conditions. Note that the initial
fault time is longer than subsequent cycles due to the
fact that the timing capacitor is completely discharged
and must initially charge to the reset threshold of 0.5V.
1
FPOLE
=
2• π • CIN • ROUT
1
FZERO =FPOLE
=
2• π • RCOMP • CCOMP
1
RCOMP CCOMP
=
2• π • FPOLE
where C is the MOSFET input capacitance and R
the output impedance of VOUT.
is
OUT
IN
The value of C
should be large enough that
COMP
parasitics connected to COMP do not effect the zero fre-
quency. A minimum of 220pF is recommended.
Transient Response
The transient performance of a linear regulator built us-
ing the UCC3837 can be predicted by understanding the
dynamics of the transient event. Consider a load tran-
sient on the application circuit of Fig. 1, where the output
current steps from a low value to a high value. Initially,
the output voltage will drop as a function of the output
capacitors ESR times the load current change. In re-
sponse to the decrease in feedback voltage at FB, the
UCC3837 error amplifier will increase its charge current
to a typical value of 40µA. The output of the amplifier will
therefore respond by first stepping the voltage propor-
tional to 40µA times R
, and then ramping up pro-
COMP
portional to 40µA and the value of C
. Dynamic
COMP
response can therefore be improved by increasing
and decreasing C
R
.
COMP
COMP
The value of VOUT will increase the same amount as the
increase in the error amplifier output. The UCC3837 out-
put gate drive current, however, is internally limited to
1.5mA. The response of the voltage at the gate of the ex-
ternal pass element is therefore a function of the 1.5mA
drive current and the external gate charge, as obtained
from the MOSFET data sheet gate charge curve.
UDG-97046
Figure 4. Load current, timing capacitor voltage and
output voltage under fault conditions.
5