First Grade 0 digital isolator for electric vehicles

By Gina Roos, editor-in-chief

Texas Instruments (TI) has claimed the industry’s first digital isolator that is qualified to the Grade 0 ambient operating temperature specification of the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC)-Q100 standard. Grade 0-qualified ICs meet the requirements of the AEC-Q100’s highest temperature grade of –40°C to 150°C and simplify the design of hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and electric vehicle (EV) systems in harsh environments. This includes 48-V HEVs in which the co-existence of internal combustion engines and battery systems can heat the air around ICs beyond 125°C.

The ISO7741E-Q1 digital isolator supports temperatures up to the Grade 0 maximum of 150°C and features a 1.5-kV_RMS working voltage and an isolation voltage of 5 kV_RMS thanks to TI’s capacitive isolation technology. This enables a more reliable operation of HEV/EV powertrain and HVAC systems that require signal transmission across an isolation barrier, such as starter generators, cooling fans, and traction inverters, said TI.

The device also offers a high typical common-mode transient immunity of ±100 kV/µs and ±8-kV IEC 61000-4-2 contact discharge protection for additional system-level protection.

The isolator helps protect low-voltage circuitry from high-voltage events in HEVs/EVs and systems and eliminates the need to design in cooling systems to reduce temperatures to below 125°C, which is the maximum temperature that Grade 1-qualified ICs can support.

In addition, engineers can increase in-vehicle network (IVN) signal protection and reach by using the ISO7741E-Q1 with the new TCAN1044EV-Q1 Grade 0 controller area network (CAN) flexible data rate (FD) transceiver  when implementing CAN-FD communications. Together, these devices can meet the ISO 11898-2:2016 timing standard for high-speed automotive communications, allowing for extended reach and signal reliability across IVNs without diminishing data rates, according to TI.

The ISO7741E-Q1  is available now from TI and authorized distributors in a 10.3 × 7.5-mm, 16-pin SOIC package and is priced at $1.49 in quantities of 1,000. Pre-production TCAN1044EV-Q1  transceivers are now only available from TI in 4.9 × 3.91-mm, eight-pin SOIC packages and are priced at $0.43 in quantities of 1,000.