An integrated H-bridge circuit in a HV technology

Abstract

H-Bridges are well known circuits to connect a load to a DC supply in both forward/reverse bias. These circuits are commonly used to drive DC and stepper motors among many other power electronics applications. In this work, a fully integrated 12V H-Bridge is designed in a 0.6μm HV technology as a replacement of an obsolete commercial part. The main objective is to provide an OEM in Uruguay with a flexible and low cost substitute of an off the shelf IC currently utilized on its products, that is being discontinued. The new H-Bridge was designed for the same package and improves some characteristics like power consumption, maximum switching frequency, over the old one. Because the cost is a major constrain to reach production stage in this project, the silicon area was reduced as much as possible. The resulting circuit is a low cost 12 V H-Bridge, with a logic input `1' down to 2.8V, switching up to 300kHz, in a 1.8mm2 die area.