Toshiba’s new advanced digital isolators

The isolators serve to provide protection against the powerful voltage pulses that are endemic in the industrial workspace and can generate common-mode transients across data line infrastructure. Members of the new quad-channel isolator series will block such destructive transients across data lines, exhibiting a common mode transient immunity (CMTI) of 100kV/μs (min.) while supporting data transmission rates of up to 150Mbps for improved efficiency.

To accommodate a wide variety of use cases, these devices also offer varied combinations of channel directions, output logic and enable controls. Four of them feature four forward channels, and the other two have three forward channels and one reverse channel. Of the four forward channel devices, two offer no enable control and the other two feature output enable. Both the devices with three forward channels and one reverse channel have an input disable function. For three of the devices, the default output logic is low and for the other three, it is high.

The new digital isolators are based on Toshiba’s proprietary magnetic coupling type insulated transmission method and will complement the company’s devices using LED-based optical isolation technology. The members of the DCL54xx01 series feature a typical pulse width distortion of only 0.8ns and a signal delay rated at 10.9ns. All six of these isolators feature a maximum withstanding isolation voltage of 5,000V for 1 minute. Acceptable power supply inputs for both VDD1 and VDD2 range from 2.25V to 5.5V. The devices are supplied in SOIC16-W packages and can operate over a temperature range of -40°C to 110°C.

The new digital isolators are aimed at protecting industrial automation systems, such as programmable logic controllers (PLC) and I/O interfaces. Other uses include motor control applications and inverters.