Atmel announced the availability of three driver ICs for high-temperature applications (AECQ100, Grade 0). The ATA6824, ATA6827 and ATA6832 are able to withstand extremely high chip temperatures of up to 200 degrees C. As a result, ambient temperatures of up to 150 degrees C can be achieved.

The ATA6827 is a fully-protected triple half-bridge driver with integrated power stages to control up to 3 different loads by a microcontroller. Each of the three high-side and three low-side drivers are capable of driving currents up to 1.0A. The ATA6827 supports the application of H-bridges to drive DC motors. The operation modes reverse, brake, and high impedance are controlled by the SPI interface.

The enhanced version, ATA6832, provides an additional PWM functionality with up to 25 kHz, enabling a DC motor control to be generated without any audible noise caused by the PWM signal. If higher output currents are required, the ATA6824 highly-integrated MOSFET driver IC is ideal. In addition to the H-bridge driver functionality, this device also includes a 5V/3V voltage regulator for microcontroller supply, a window watchdog and a serial interface.

The ATA6824, ATA6827 and ATA6832 driver ICs provide several protection features such as over-temperature shutdown, overload and over-voltage protection, as well as protection against short circuits. The devices also meet the automotive qualification demands (protection against conducted interference, EMC and ESD protection) and can withstand transients as specified in ISO/TR 7637.

Samples of the driver ICs ATA6824 (QFN32 package), ATA6827 (QFN18 package) and ATA6832 (QFN18 package) are available now. The pricing is US$1.85 for the ATA6824, US$1.00 for the ATA6827 and US$1.05 for the ATA6832 (at 10k each).