The printed circuit board (PCB) should use a heavy ground plane. For optimum electrical and thermal performance, the DRV8801A-Q1 device must be soldered directly onto the board. On the bottom side of the DRV8801A-Q1 device is a thermal pad, which provides a path for enhanced thermal dissipation. The thermal pad should be soldered directly to an exposed surface on the PCB. Thermal vias are used to transfer heat to other layers of the PCB. For more information on this technique, refer to QFN/SON PCB Attachment.

The load supply pin, V_BB, should be decoupled with an electrolytic capacitor (typically 100 μF) in parallel with a ceramic capacitor placed as close as possible to the device. In order to minimize lead inductance, the ceramic capacitors between the VCP and V_BB pins, connected to the REG pin, and the capacitors between the CP1 and CP2 pins should be as close to the pins of the device as possible.