Regarding gate drivers:
IMO this depends on what FET is in use. I know I want to move away from the STP55NF06L's as they've never really been suitable for this job, are becoming harder to source, and are no longer significantly cheaper (in fact, they seem to be getting dearer).
This means we just need to choose decent FETs.
There are many FETs with very decent RDS(on) values when driven at 2.8v or less, and driving them at voltages higher than 5v provides little or no reduction in the RDS(on) value. The hard part will be choosing one that has reasonable max voltage that allows a suitable max voltage range. The IRLB8743PBF has a max voltage of 30V, which is quite suitable for a 24-28v supply into the board, a gate threshold of ~1.8v (max of 2.35v, so 3.3v is well over that), and has a nice low RDS(on) max of about 4.2mohms (@Vgs=4.5v, the smallest Vgs they measure the RDS(on) at).
My only concern will be just how much current we need to actually supply to drive the FET (which while small, is not zero, due to the inrush current to drive the gate capacitance), that might cause an issue for the Arduino Due. I personally don't think this is that much of an issue, though I'm happy to be proven wrong.
IMO this depends on what FET is in use. I know I want to move away from the STP55NF06L's as they've never really been suitable for this job, are becoming harder to source, and are no longer significantly cheaper (in fact, they seem to be getting dearer).
This means we just need to choose decent FETs.
There are many FETs with very decent RDS(on) values when driven at 2.8v or less, and driving them at voltages higher than 5v provides little or no reduction in the RDS(on) value. The hard part will be choosing one that has reasonable max voltage that allows a suitable max voltage range. The IRLB8743PBF has a max voltage of 30V, which is quite suitable for a 24-28v supply into the board, a gate threshold of ~1.8v (max of 2.35v, so 3.3v is well over that), and has a nice low RDS(on) max of about 4.2mohms (@Vgs=4.5v, the smallest Vgs they measure the RDS(on) at).
My only concern will be just how much current we need to actually supply to drive the FET (which while small, is not zero, due to the inrush current to drive the gate capacitance), that might cause an issue for the Arduino Due. I personally don't think this is that much of an issue, though I'm happy to be proven wrong.