Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

To cope with the challenge of global climate change and realise the goal of carbon emission reduction and energy efficiency improvement, the application of renewable energy and new energy technologies has been rapidly developed in industrial and automotive fields, which also greatly extends the processing and transmission scenarios of analog chips, especially in the application field of neighbourhood electric vehicles (NEVs).

Since 2016, NOVOSENSE Microelectronics has started to plan the automotive-qualified products. The current three product directions cover signal sensing, system interconnection and power drive, with products meeting the AEC-Q100 reliability test standards and providing comprehensive automotive electronic solutions.

Signal Sensing

To meet the requirements of full combustion and emission reduction for complying with the upgrading of environmental regulations and emissions standards, it is often necessary to install a temperature manifold absolute pressure (TMAP) sensor on the intake manifold of the engine of automobile/motorcycle to quickly and accurately control the air-fuel ratio and achieve a balance between power performance, fuel economy and emissions. NOVOSENSE NSP163x series is a type of MEMS absolute pressure wafer based on the piezoresistive effect of high-sensitivity monocrystalline silicon and is designed with advanced silicon-silicon bonding CSOI MEMS micromachining technology, the manufacturing platform that has been certified by IAFTF16949 and all wafers (100%) have passed AOI and CP tests.

NOVOSENSE NSPAS3 is an automotive integrated absolute pressure sensor based on piezoresistive effect of silicon and using advanced MEMS micromachining technology. The product adopts automotive-qualified signal conditioning chips to calibrate and compensate the output of the MEMS die, which can convert pressure signals from 10kPa to 400kPa into analogue output signals with a customised output range (0 to 5V). NSP163X series and NSPAS3 series are mainly used for automotive intake manifold pressure detection and motorcycle intake path pressure detection, as well as HEV/EV vacuum boost system (VBS) and battery pack pressure detection. NOVOSENSE NSPAS1 is also a calibrated absolute pressure sensor for gasoline vehicle intake pressure, NEV vacuum boost and motorcycle TMAP market, which meets the AEC-Q100 reliability standard.

System Interconnection

The signal conversion between strong and weak circuits in NEVs has significantly increased the demand for digital transmission isolation chips. Due to the requirements of safety regulations, common ground and performance in NEVs, digital isolation chips are required for the motor, power battery and electric control system (such as OBC, BMS, inverter, electric air compressor, PTC driver and other high voltage modules).

The NOVOSENSE NSi82x series is a highly reliable multi-channel digital isolator that has been certified for UL1577 and VDE enhanced safety and supports a variety of insulation and withstand voltages (3.75kVrms, 5kVrms). The wide supply voltage range of these series components enables direct connection to most digital interfaces for easy level switching. NOVOSENSE NCA1021 universal automotive-qualified LIN transceiver chip can be widely used in bus interface design of automotive electronic subsystem, such as electric door lock, electric window, electric seat, electric rearview, glass wiper and seat heater modules, with the advantages of small interference between lines, less wiring harness, long transmission distance, and lower cost.

In high voltage current detection for automotive applications, there are usually two schemes: hall-based current sensing and shunt-based current sensing. The former has natural isolation characteristics, while the latter requires additional isolated amplifiers or modulators for electrical isolation. In comparison, the sampling scheme based on shunt plus isolated amplifier/modulator has higher accuracy and lower nonlinearity, and the offset voltage and temperature drift are lower and is not easy to be interfered by external magnetic field, which is preferred by engineers.

NOVOSENSE NSi13xx series chip has the common-mode transient immunity (CMTI) of 150kV/μs, with good accuracy and compact package design, which is suitable for motor drive, photovoltaic inverter, uninterrupted power supply and other industrial applications, as well as high voltage side current and voltage sampling in onboard charger (OBC), traction inverter and other automotive applications.

Power Drive

In 2022, NOVOSENSE has launched a series of automotive-qualified chips. NOVOSENSE automotive-qualified LDO NSR31/33/35 series chips are specially designed for the application scenarios where automotive batteries power the system. With ultra-low static power consumption of 5uA and low drop-out voltage, they are suitable for the automotive applications with high standby power consumption requirements—e.g., to power MCU and CAN/LIN transceivers in systems to save power and prolong battery life.

The series chips can be used in such application scenarios as IVI and autonomous driving, body electronics and lighting, inverter and motor control, as well as OBC/DCDC and BMS. Designed for driving high-reliability load applications, the NSE11409 series intelligent low-side switches can be widely used to drive load elements such as relays, actuator valves, lighting and heating resistance wires in automotive and industrial scenarios.

With the rise of the third-generation semiconductor SiC MOSFET, systems with higher voltage, higher frequency and higher power density are becoming new development trends. However, in the applications with high voltage and high frequency, the Power FET in the system is exposed to the risk of damage due to high dv/dt interference. The high-reliability single-channel isolated gate driver NSi6601M with the miller clamp protection can solve this problem well. It can be widely applied to ESS, OBC/DCDC and compressor/inverter and other applications.

In addition, the NOVOSENSE single-channel smart isolated gate driver NSi661/51 with 10A driving current is also suitable for driving SiC, IGBT, MOSFET and other power FET, which can be applied to such applications as NEV traction inverter, generator and boost DCDC.

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