News: Microelectronics
2 May 2025
Navitas launches GaNSense Motor Drive ICs for home appliances and industrial drives up to 600W
Gallium nitride (GaN) power IC and silicon carbide (SiC) technology firm Navitas Semiconductor Corp of Torrance, CA, USA has announced a new family of GaNSense Motor Drive ICs targeting home appliances and industrial drives up to 600W.
Specifically designed for motor drive applications, the fully integrated solution combines two GaN FETs in a half-bridge configuration with drive, control, sensing and autonomous protection. Compared with legacy silicon IGBT solutions, this results in a 4% higher efficiency, 40% PCB footprint reduction, and 15% lower system cost.
Key features include bidirectional lossless current sensing, which measures both positive and negative currents. This is critical in motor drives, given recirculating currents in the reverse direction between switching coil phases. The lossless sensing eliminates the need for external shunt resistors, resulting in higher efficiency, improved reliability, and a more compact design.
Turn-on and turn-off slew rates are fully adjustable, allowing designers to optimize EMI, performance, and maximize efficiency. The autonomous freewheeling function switches on the GaN IC upon the detection of reverse current to reduce conduction losses, maximize efficiency, and reduce the size and cost of heatsinks.
The GaNSense Motor Drive IC family also includes several safety features such as high- and-low-side short-circuit protection, over-temperature protection (OTP), and 2kV ESD on all pins.
The 650V family starts with NV6257 (2 x 170mΩ, PQFN 6x8), NV6287 (2 x 170mΩ, PQFN 8x10), and NV6288 (2 x 120mΩ, PQFN 8x10), supporting drives up to 600W.
Target applications focus on motor drives up to 600W, including air conditioners, heat pumps, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators, and hair dryers. For low-power industrial drives, applications range from pumps to circulators and fans.
The GaNSense Motor Drive ICs are on display booth #544 (Hall 9) at the Power Electronics, Intelligent Motion, Renewable Energy and Energy Management (PCIM 2025) Expo & Conference in Nuremberg, Germany (6–8 May).
Navitas’ GaNSense ICs used in Great Wall’s 2.5kW DC–DC converter for 400V power architecture
