STMicroelectronics’ STSPIN233 is thought to be the industry’s first low-voltage motor driver suitable for both single-shunt and three-shunt brushless-motor driving integrating a 200 mΩ 1.3Arms power stage, in a 3 mm x 3 mm package. It is also said to exhibit the industry’s lowest standby current, at less than 80 nA. It can be put into standby mode under logic control, making it viable for extending operation from batteries in equipment like drone-camera gimbals, educational robots, toothbrushes, shavers, medical syringe pumps, or small drives in Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.
The device’s input-voltage range of 1.8V to 10V allows use with a power source as basic as a single Li-ion cell. Built-in safety features further simplify system design, including over-current, short-circuit, and over-temperature protection, UVLO, and interlocking. A development ecosystem comprising a Nucleo expansion board (X-NUCLEO-IHM17M1) and related software tools (X-CUBE-SPN17 for STM32Cube) is available for the STSPIN233, to jump-start evaluation and prototyping leveraging the easy-to-use STM32Cube software environment that includes tools, middleware, and application-code examples.
The STSPIN233 is available now in a 3 mm x 3 mm QFN, priced from $0.95 each/1,000. Just for the halibut, you can check out an STSPIN233 datasheet.