Infineon launches smart Power PROFET switches for automotive applications

Since relays and fuses cannot meet the requirements of modern E/E vehicle architectures, partial or complete electrification of the primary and secondary power distribution must be taken into account. To address this issue, Infineon Technologies has launched a new generation of ultra-low ohmic high-side switches in a TO-leadless package, the Power PROFET + 12V switch family.

The Power PROFET + 12V allows for new mounting locations and new enclosure options, enabling the next generation of decentralized power architectures with high efficiency.

Two variants are available: the BTS50005-1LUA with an on-resistance (R _DS(ON)) of 0.6 mΩ and the BTS50010-1LUA with an R _DS(ON) of 1.0 mΩ for the lowest power losses. They are designed to control high-current applications, especially in hot cabin and engine compartment environments for demanding high inrush currents, such as in heaters, pumps, and fans. They provide more than 1,000,000 switching cycles compared to, for example, on average 200,000 switching cycles of a relay.

The switches can replace electromechanical relays, fuses, and discrete circuits in power distribution boxes and other applications up to 65 A in a 12 V electrical system.

Furthermore, the switches offer built-in protection and diagnostic functions, such as short-circuit, over-current and over-temperature protection. As a result, the devices are fully protected and provide a fault signal via the diagnosis enable pin to a connected microcontroller for advanced diagnosis in power distribution modules. With their robustness, protection, and diagnosis features the switches improve the reliability of the entire vehicle by preventing failure modes in the power board net.

The smart power switches are housed in an 8-pin TO leadless package, reducing the footprint by 23% compared to D2PAK while providing similar thermal performance. The accuracy of the load current sense has been improved down to 5% and can be evaluated by reading an analog voltage on the IS pin. In addition, the switch family is PRO-SIL ISO 26262-ready and comes with a safety application note supporting the evaluation of hardware elements according to ISO 26262.

To enable easy design-in process of Power PROFET +12V devices, the family is integrated into the Infineon Smart Power Switches Intrinsic Fuse Tool and the Infineon Smart Power Switches kILIS Tool, both available in the Infineon Developer Center.

The Smart Power Switches Intrinsic Fuse tool allows to calculate the intrinsic fusing characteristic based on the embedded overtemperature protection of the respective selected product under certain boundary conditions. The kILIS tool is used for calculating and visualizing the range of the sense current for specific load currents on the respective selected product, taking the kILIS rate, sense resistor, and ADC tolerances into account.