Proposed Integrated Circuit for Appliance or Process Control

There is an accelerating trend toward the development of integrated circuit designs which offer the control industry complete functional building blocks on a single semiconductor chip. This paper describes the results of one such design for the ON-OFF control function, the TRIGAC zero crossing switch. The TRIGAC, when combined with an SCR or TRIAC power switch and a small number of passive components, performs all of the signal processing required for the interface between a 10-mW sensor (bilateral or unilateral) and load circuits of up to 5 kW. (This range may be extended to 200 amperes or more with a simple external pulse amplifier.)