General description

The PCA8537 is a fully featured Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)1 driver, specifically designed for high-contrast Vertical Alignment (VA) LCD with multiplex rates up to 1:8. It generates the drive signals for any static or multiplexed LCD containing up to eight backplanes, 46 segments, and up to 352 elements. The PCA8537 features an internal charge pump with internal capacitors for on-chip generation of the LCD driving voltage. To ensure an optimal and stable contrast over the full temperature range, the PCA8537 offers a programmable temperature compensation of the LCD supply voltage. The PCA8537 can be easily connected to a microcontroller by either the two-line I2C-bus (PCA8537AH) or a three-line bidirectional SPI-bus (PCA8537BH).

Features and benefits

■ AEC Q100 compliant for automotive applications.

■ Low-power single-chip LCD controller and driver

■ 352 elements allowing to drive:

◆ up to 44 7-segment alphanumeric characters

◆ up to 22 14-segment alphanumeric characters

■ Selectable backplane drive configuration: static, 2, 4, 6, or 8 backplane multiplexing

■ Software programmable internal charge pump for on-chip LCD voltage generation up to 9 V with internal capacitors

■ 400 kHz I2C-bus interface (PCA8537AH)

■ 5 MHz SPI-bus interface (PCA8537BH)

■ Programmable temperature compensation of VLCD in four regions

■ Selectable display bias configuration

■ Wide range for digital power supply: from 1.8 V to 5.5 V

■ Wide LCD supply range: from 2.5 V for low threshold LCDs and up to 9.0 V for high threshold twisted nematic LCDs

■ Display memory bank switching in static, duplex, and quadruplex drive modes

■ 352-bit RAM for display data storage

■ Programmable frame frequency in the range of 60 Hz to 300 Hz in steps of 10 Hz; factory calibrated

■ Integrated temperature sensor with temperature readout

■ On chip calibration of internal oscillator frequency and VLCD

■ Manufactured in silicon gate CMOS process

Applications

■ Instrument cluster

■ Car radio

■ Climate control units