The A5985 from Allegro MicroSystems is a Microstepping Motor Driver IC that has been designed to control bipolar stepper motors from full-step up to 1/32-step modes. It requires an input voltage of up to 40 V and provides an output current of less than 2 A. It features a proprietary Adaptive Percent Fast Decay (APFD) algorithm to optimize the current waveform over a wide range of stepper speeds and stepper motor characteristics. This motor driver includes a translator that eliminates the requirement of phase sequence tables, high-frequency control lines, or complex interfaces to the program, thereby offering easy implementation. It includes internal synchronous rectification control circuitry to improve power dissipation during PWM operation.

This motor driver benefits from short-to-ground protection, shorted load protection, short-to-battery protection, crossover-current protection, internal UVLO, and thermal shutdown circuitry. It has low drain-source on-resistance outputs and features synchronous rectification for low power dissipation. This motor driver is available in a surface-mount package that measures 5 x 5 x 0.9 mm and is ideal for video security cameras, printers, scanners, robotics, ATMs, and point of sale (POS) applications.