Driver Fits Cooling Fan Electronics Into Single Chip
October 30, 2002 - Concord, NH
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Melexis' single-chip fan driver eliminates all of the components found in a traditional CPU cooling fan.
The three-lead US79, tucked into a low-cost industry-standard package, reduces the fan electronics from eight components to one, Melexis says.
The target is fans up to 90 mm.
The cooling fan is such an essential part of the CPU that fan failure will cause intermittent CPU failure.
Brad Marshall, president of Melexis USA, said the primary objective in the fan-driver IC design was to do away with all other components and their 16 solder joints, re- placing them with three connections to significantly increase reliability and eliminate the major cause of fan failures.
The secondary objective was to provide built-in protection against environmental causes of failure, including overheating, reverse voltage, power-supply overvoltage surges and output transistor clamp inductive spikes. The design suppresses radio-frequency interference, protects against electrostatic discharge of the IC and of the fan, and guards against locked-rotor problems.
A low starting voltage of 2.2 V suits the IC for 3-V personal computers. It boasts low power dissipation, CMOS output transistors for low Vsat and high sensitivity.
Driver capability is 40 to 400 mA.
The US79 single-IC fan driver comes in a three-pin industry-standard UA package, priced at 30 cents each in quantities of a million pieces. Devices are currently available for sampling.
This article is from the Electronics Engineering Times (http://www.eet.com/)
| Part Number |
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| Description |
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US79
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Smart Fan Motor Driver
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For Further Information
Please Contact:
Steve Bahn
(603) 223 2362
sbn@melexis.com
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