If you are driving a logic level MOSFET directly from an Arduino, or another Atmel AVR such as an ATTiny85, you may have wondered what value resistor should be placed between the output pin and the MOSFET Gate.
In the tutorials referenced by Adafruit and Sparkfun they connect an Arduino output pin directly to the MOSFET gate. But others insist that you need a current limiting resistor to protect the microcontroller output pin.
Voltage controlled device
A MOSFET is normally thought of as a voltage controlled device, sufficient voltage at the gate opens the MOSFET and allows a large current to flow through the drain/source. In this model very little current is required at the gate. So with this simplistic model of MOSFET operation a current limiting resistor is not required.
Charging the gate
However during switching a MOSFET behaves more like a capacitor that needs to be charged in order to open and discharged in order to close. The datasheet for a STP16NF06L 16A 60V logic level MOSFET shows a 345nF input capacitance and a 7.3 nC total gate charge. Coulombs are a measure of capacity, current time in units of amp seconds. The datasheet quotes a 47nS on/rise time with a 4.7 ohm gate resistor, so it took an average of 7.3nC/47nS = 155mA average current to charge the gate – that’s far more than the 40mA maximum current for an Atmel AVR output pin. So with this in mind it’s important to protect the microcontroller with a current limiting resistor.
Charging speed
A MOSFET is an efficient switch when completely on or off, but it is inefficient when switching and dissipates those losses as heat. The more resistance we put between the microcontroller output pin and the MOSFET gate, the more slowly the gate will charge and the hotter the MOSFET will run. This becomes particularly important if you are switching the MOSFET on and off quickly with a PWM output.
PWM stands for Pulse Width Modulation and is a method of controlling the average voltage output of a microcontroller pin by turning the output on (5V) and off (0V) very quickly. The duty load on an Arduino PWM pin can be set with analogWrite and ranges from zero, always off, to 255, always on. Set to 63 the pin would be on a quarter of the time so the average voltage would be 5V/4 = 1.25V.
LEDs have very fast switching times, approximately 20 nanoseconds for white LEDs, so when a PWM output is used to control the brightness of a LED the duty load determines what percentage of time the LED is turned on. As long the PWM frequency is greater than 200Hz the human eye cannot detect any flicker.
Microcontroller source resistance
If you look at an Atmel datasheet you will find a graph showing IO PIN OUPUT VOLTAGE vs. SOURCE CURRENT.
At 25 Celsius this this shows a nice straight line from 5V at 0mA to 4.5V at 20mA.
What this tells us is that the output pins have an internal resistance within the microcontroller, (5V – 4.5V)/20 mA, which is 25 ohms. So the maximum theoretical current we can attempt to source with the microcontroller running at 5V is 5V/25ohms which is 200mA. This is considerably higher than the 40mA absolute maximum in the data sheet.
To get down to 40mA we need to add a 100 ohm resistor, 5V/125ohms = 40mA. To get down to the 20mA level, recommended by Arduino, would require 225 ohms, 5V/250ohms = 20mA, the nearest standard resistor value of 220 ohms is close enough.
A real world test
To see what really happens I hooked an ATTiny85 8kHz PWM output pin to STP16NF06L logic level MOSFET through a 100ohm resistor. I used an oscilloscope to measure the voltage with respect to ground on both sides of the resistor.
An oscilloscope can only measure voltage directly, but by measuring the voltage drop across the resistor we can calculate the current flowing. I used the math function of the oscilloscope to display the difference between the two signals.
This showed a maximum 2.5V voltage drop across the resistor during turn on and a maximum 3V voltage drop during turn off. So the current flowing was 2.5V/100ohms = 25mA during turn on and 3V/100ohms = 30mA during turn off, both under the 40mA absolute maximum. It’s a good idea to drive components below their absolute maximum ratings, so it’s nice to see that we are below 40mA.
So in summary a 100 ohm resistor between an Arduino or similar Atmel AVR output pin and a logic level MOSFET looks like a good balance between switching speed and protecting the output pin from damage.