Avago Technologies’ Automotive-Grade Optocouplers Selected for Use in Mazda’s New Hydrogen/Gas Powered Hybrid Vehicle

Mazda’s Premacy hybrid vehicle is an innovative concept car, which combines a hydrogen rotary engine and a hybrid system. The vehicle is a bi-fuel version of Mazda’s compact MPV Mazda5 and has a fuel efficient hybrid system that substantially increases its driving range and power over other hybrid vehicles in its class. The ACPL-312T provides isolated gate drive switching capability to drive the vehicle’s high powered insulated gate bipolar transistors/metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (IGBTs/MOSFETS) while the ACPL-782T isolation amplifier is used for motor inverter current/voltage monitoring and measurement.

“We’re delighted that Yaskawa Electric Corporation, which is one of Mazda’s key electronic motor system suppliers has chosen our R2Coupler products for integration into their electronic motors,” said Tze Siong Chong, vice president and general manager, Isolation Products Division, Avago Technologies. “The adoption of these products for use in the electronic motor that is being used in the Premacy is validation that our automotive-grade isolation products meet the stringent reliability and reinforced capabilities that designers of automotive electronic motor inverter systems require.”

Avago’s ACPL-782T isolation amplifier is designed with a tight +/- 2 percent gain tolerance which provides high accuracy measurement and stability over the time needed to accurately monitor motor current or voltage in high noise motor control environments. The ACPL-312T grade gate drive optocoupler provides up to 2.5 amps of peak output current to drive high powered IGBTs/MOSFETs used in electric motor inverters. Additionally, it has a low proprogation delay of 0.5 µs which allows the circuit designer to reduce switching dead time and improve inverter efficiency. Both of Avago’s new R2Coupler products offer enhanced construction with superior thermal conductivity making them ideal for providing isolation in inverter and power management systems.

We used Avago's ACPL-782T, which is indispensable, for the inverter control DC voltage detector in automotive applications and have succeeded in developing an instantaneous voltage monitoring system, said Kiyotaka Fuji, Inverter Division Engineering Department, Yaskawa Electronic Corporation. The system is enabled to control the vehicle’s power and allow us to provide a high output inverter control according to our customer's specifications. In automotive (EMC) immunity environments, the isolation amplifier produced by Avago Technologies has provided distinguished performance while satisfying the criteria of the test environment. Additionally, we used Avago’s ACPL-312T for the IGBT drive to shorten the dead time, thereby achieving highly efficient inverter control.

The ACPL-782T and ACPL-312T are designed to operate over a wide operating temperature range and are qualified to AEC-Q100 Grade 1 automotive stress test requirements and manufactured under TS16949 automotive quality standards. Moreover, these R2Couplers from Avago provide reinforced insulation and reliability that delivers safe signal isolation which is critical in auto¬motive and high temperature industrial applications.