H-bridge driver

Question

I am currently working on some hobby project. I have a 24V 2A DC motor that I want to drive. I designed a board with a designated IC on it to drive the motor, it wirked just fine. But then I thought that I would try to design my own H-bridge motor driver so that I am not bound by the parameters of the IC (current limit of 4A, it gets overheated easily, etc.)

So my question is: is this a good H-bridge design?

I am not looking for a 3 pin design, so my question is not regarding that. I want a 4 pin H-bridge, where I can control each pin with an MCU. I have seen some designs over the internet, nearly all of them agree on the N-channel MOSFET on the low side, and the P-channel MOSFET on the high side, with the flyback diodes parallel to each MOSFET.

But what about the BJT? Is it a good idea to drive the P-MOSFET through BJTs? Let's assume an STM32 3.3V MCU as the control unit, the pins that you can see here are directly connected to the GPIO pins of the MCU. Are the resistors of the correct value?

As I understand, R15 and R42 are "used" as current limiting resistors, but there is not so much current flowing that way, so small values like a 100ohm or 1k is okay?

R31 and R40 are pull down resistors, they need a high value like 10k, 100k to have only a small current there?

R17 and R22 are pull-up resistors when the BJT is off, same large values as the previous pull-down resistors?

I guess that R1 and R39 also limit the current, but I have no idea what is a good size there.

What else should I pay attention to? I guess I should choose P channel transistors that can handle high currents and high voltages, also the 24V gate voltage. N channel MOSFETs to be able to handle large currents. And what about the BJT? How do I choose that one?

So yeah, alltogether my question is: is this a good circuit, will it work, how to choose resistor sizes and BJT?

EDIT!

Based on the comments that I got (thank you very much), I re-designed the schematic:

The low-side PWM was a good suggestion, I did not think about that. I reduced the pull-down resistor sizes to make the switching faster. Based on an other very useful comment, I introduced a 15V zener diode to both sides to protect my MOSFET's gate from over-voltage. I also replaced the BJT with the exact same N-MOSFET switch that I use on the low side.

I did not get the boost-capacitor thing though :(

What do you think now?

Answer 1

But what about the BJT? Is it a good idea to drive the P-MOSFET through BJTs?

It is fine, it doesn't matter what you use to drive the h-bridge mosfets as much as the time it takes to change the gate voltage.

There are two problems:

1. Long switching times
2. The high and the low side being on at the same time

Long switching times dissipate heat in the mosfet. If the mosfet is fully off it has really low current/high resistance, and there is little power dissipation. If the mosfet is fully on it has high current/low resisance and more power dissipation, but form many fets the Rdson is lower than 1Ω or in the mΩ range, so large currents will still dissipate heats that the package can handle.

The problem when the gate voltage is somewhere in the middle, and the resistance in the mosfet is equal to the load. At that point the fet will dissipate the same half of the power in the load (and is the peak power point). This can only happen for a short time, which will depend on a large variety of factors, the current, resistance of the fet and the gate capacitance and the other capacitances of the fet if switching fast.

The other thing you want to avoid is the high side and low side being on at the same time, this can be more difficult with using p-ch and n-ch at the same time (I usually use all n-ch, on the high side it becomes difficult to turn on the gate, but there are many ways to overcome this problem).

At the end of the day a spice simulation is best to verify that the fets are not burning up.

Answer 2

What do you think now?

I think you should probably simulate it in a spice package LT spice usually the one that I go to. Over all the design looks much better, and the high section of the bridge should switch faster.

The reason is there are many problems that are easier to spot. It's much easier to see if both and high and low sides are off at the same time.

Make sure you check power dissipation of parts. It's also good to simulate loads, especially loads that can change the inrush current. The inductance of wire or capacitive elements can cause issues for an h bridge.

Another problem that you may face is switching direction of the motor, because the motor is large inductive element and can also be affected by back EMF and the mechanical load. Would probably be wise to not immediately switch direction as that would generate large amounts of current and burn elements out, I also depends on the motor. If you are switching direction you could wait for a period of time for the motor to slow down and then turn on the other side.

Answer 3

I built your circuit (in real life) but changed the resistance values for both High/Low sides to 10k/460 (instead of 100K/10K for High side, and 10K/100 for Low side, respectively), and it works well. I did the resistance change in order to be able to use an LTV-846 opto-coupler for control, and not worry about putting in BJT's and their circuitry.

In general, it worked as intended at 12V, but I don't think you can go to 24V. I measured with a scope and noticed that the "blocking" High-side P-MOSFET sees a Gate to Drain voltage equal to the voltage applied to the load. So, if the conducting branch applies 24V to the load, the blocking P-MOSFET sees those 24V from Gate to Drain.

I know the 20V gate limit is supposed to be from Gate to Source (which in your design is protected by the Zenner), but this Gate to Drain voltage somehow anyway destroyed one of my High-side MOSFETs. I did measure the voltage across the Zenner and it's very fuzzy but stays at 5V or so. Everything is peachy at 12V.