According to their manufacturer, the ACSL-600 family from Agilent Technologies represents the industry's first 3.3-V, 15-Mbaud multichannel and bi-directional digital logic-gate optocouplers. "The 15 Mbauds is the industry's highest rate for a digital logic gate semiconductor solution," explains Gary Tay, business development manager for the Isolation Products Division of Agilent's Semiconductor Products Group.
The company's patented die-stacking technique makes the optocouplers' small size possible. Light-emitting diode (LED) die and an insulating layer are stacked on a silicon substrate. The resulting small size suits the optocouplers for a wide range of applications in consumer, computer, communications, and industrial electronics.
The devices feature a minimum 10-Mbaud rate (15-Mbaud typical) and are compatible with low-power Schottky transistor-to-transistor logic (LSTTL)/TTL levels. They're available in dual-, triple-, and quad-channel versions supplied in compact eight-pin (4.9 by 5.9 by 1.7 mm for dual-channel units) and 16-pin (9.9 by 5.9 by 1.7 mm for triple- and quad-channel units) thin small-outline IC (SOIC) packages.
Also, they feature 10-kV/µs minimum common-mode rejection at a 1-kV common-mode voltage. Supply voltage ranges from 3.3 to 5.5 V. They operate from 40°C to 100°C. And, they meet the UL1577 (2500 V RMS), CSA Component Acceptance Notice No. 5, and IEC/EN/DIN EN 60747-5-2 (replaces VDE 0884) international safety standards.
The ACSL-600 optocouplers can be used for isolating a 24-bit sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter (ADC) from a microcontroller in a data-acquisition system digitizing the output of sensors. They also can be used in a Power over Ethernet (PoE) application, isolating the host controller from the host swap controller via I2C interfaces, to protect the host controller against high-voltage surges that occur during hot-swapping operations.
The ACSL-6400 with quad unidirectional channels costs $4.14 each, while the ACSL-6210 with dual bidirectional channels goes for $2.53 each, both in 10,000-unit lots. Agilent plans to introduce the triple unidirectional channel ACSL-6300, the triple bidirectional (2/1) channel ACSL-6310, the quad bidirectional (3/1) channel ACSL-6410, and the quad bidirectional (2/2) channel ACSL-6420 in the third quarter of 2005.
Agilent Technologies Inc.www.agilent.com (800) 235-0312