STMicroelectronics and Sanken Announce Strategic Partnership to Develop Intelligent Power Modules for Industrial and Automotive Products

By Tiera Oliver

Associate Editor

Embedded Computing Design

October 26, 2020

News

The two companies are developing and will jointly market 650V/50A and 1200V/10A industrial modules.

STMicroelectronics and Sanken Electric have collaborated to display the advantages of intelligent power modules (IPM) in high-voltage, high-power equipment designs.

The two companies are developing and will jointly market 650V/50A and 1200V/10A industrial modules, which according to the companies, simplify design challenges and shrink the bill of materials for HVAC systems, industrial servo drives, industrial washing machines, and general-purpose inverters over 3 kW. The ST/Sanken IPM product roadmap will continue with 650V/50A automotive-grade modules for high-voltage compressors, pumps, and cooling fans.

The new IPMs integrate a complete inverter stage including six short-circuit rugged IGBTs with freewheeling diodes, associated high-side and low-side gate drivers in a single package designed optimally for thermal efficiency. Ready to operate in hard switching up to 20 kHz, the modules also contain built-in features for protection and control. These include bootstrap diodes, short-circuit protection, under-voltage lockout protection for gate drivers, a 100 kΩ thermistor for temperature monitoring, and a comparator for fault protection.

Additional benefits include:

  • 3.3V/5V TTL/CMOS-compatible inputs with hysteresis
  • Shutdown input and Fault output
  • Separate open-emitter outputs
  • Soft-recovery diodes
  • Fully isolated package with isolation rating of 2500Vrms/min

Engineering samples of the industrial IPMs will be available in March 2021 and production will begin soon afterwards. Samples of the automotive-grade devices will be available in second half of 2021.

For more information, visit: www.st.com or www.sanken-ele.co.jp/en/

Tiera Oliver, Associate Editor for Embedded Computing Design, is responsible for web content edits, product news, and constructing stories. She also assists with newsletter updates as well as contributing and editing content for ECD podcasts and the ECD YouTube channel. Before working at ECD, Tiera graduated from Northern Arizona University where she received her B.S. in journalism and political science and worked as a news reporter for the university’s student led newspaper, The Lumberjack.

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