The automotive environment and what it means to the power switch

In today´s trading environment, the commercial success of a vehicle is not guaranteed by good technical performance alone. Nowadays users expect that cars and vans to achieve high levels of performance for long periods of time. In other words they must be reliable and reliability of the whole depends on the reliability of the parts which, increasingly, includes complex electronic systems. The author describes some of the overstress conditions that can occur in vehicles and their effect on power semiconductor switches. He goes on to describe several methods of surviving such conditions including the use of discrete protection circuits. The author shows how integrating protection into the power chip gives devices like the Philips TOPFET and protected IGBTs, enhanced protection and introduce several other useful benefits