Rugged High-Side Driver Protects Against Severe Voltage Transients in Auto Apps
With 4-V minimum operating voltage, the VNQ9050LAJ 4-channel automotive high-side driver powers through disturbances including cold cranking operation down to 2.7 V. It thus boosts vehicle reliability in extreme conditions and when there’s resilience to severe transients.
Featuring high accuracy and wide operating range, the driver, developed by STMicroelectronics, provides several current-sense diagnostic functions. These include analog feedback of load current, overload and short-to-ground or power-limitation alerts, thermal-shutdown indication, output short-to-VCC detection, and OFF-state open-load detection. The VNQ9050LAJ, designed to power 12-V ground-connected loads, is compatible with 3- and 5-V logic signals and offers a typical on-resistance as low as 50 Ω.
As an intelligent power switch, the driver protects resistive, capacitive, and inductive loads using an integrated high-precision, load-current-sensing, current-mirror circuit. It’s connected to an external pin that allows for connecting a resistor to convert the sensed current into a voltage for continuous load monitoring. A sense-enable pin lets similar devices share the external sense resistor.
The driver also integrates an overvoltage clamp, thermal-transient limiting, and a configurable latch-off/on overtemperature or power limitation. Among other features are electrostatic-discharge protection, loss of ground and loss of VCC protection, and reverse-battery protection.
The VNQ9050LAJ, in production now, is available in a thermally enhanced Power-SSO16 package. Pricing starts at $1.09 for orders of 1,000 pieces.
About the Author
Lee Goldberg
Contributing Editor
Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.
Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.
Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.
Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.
Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.