LTC1155
7
Rev. C
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APPLICATIONS INFORMATION
Protecting the MOSFET
The MOSFET is protected against destruction by removing
drive from the gate as soon as an overcurrent condition is
detected. Resistive and inductive loads can be protected
with no external time delay. Large capacitive or lamp loads,
however, require that the overcurrent shutdown function
be delayed long enough to start the load but short enough
to ensure the safety of the MOSFET.
Example Calculations
Consider the circuit of Figure 1. A power MOSFET is driven
by one side of an LTC1155 to switch a high inrush cur-
rent load. The drain sense resistor is selected to limit the
maximum DC current to 3.3A.
RSEN = VSEN/ITRIP
= 0.1/3.3A
= 0.03Ω
A time delay is introduced between RSEN and the drain
sense pin of the LTC1155 which provides sufficient delay
to start a high inrush load such as large supply capacitors.
In this example circuit, we have selected the IRLZ34 because
of its low RDS(ON)(0.05Ω with VGS = 5V). The FET drops
0.1V at 2A and, therefore, dissipates 200mW in normal
operation (no heat sinking required).
1155 F01
IRLZ34
LOAD
LTC1155
GND
GND G1
DS1
VS
IN1
VS = 5.0V
CDLY
0.22µF
RSEN
0.03Ω
RDLY
270k
Figure 1. Adding an RC Delay
in the power supply can be substantial and attributed to
many sources including harness wiring, PCB traces, supply
capacitor ESR, transformer resistance or battery resistance.
For this example, we assume a worst-case scenario; i.e.,
that the power supply to the power MOSFET is “hard” and
provides a constant 5V regardless of the current. In this
case, the current is limited by the RDS(ON) of the MOSFET
and the drain sense resistance. Therefore:
IPEAK = VSUPPLY/0.08Ω
= 62.5A
The drop across the drain sense resistor under these
conditions is much larger than 100mV and is equal to the
drain current times the sense resistance:
VDROP = (IPEAK)(RSEN)
= 1.88V
By consulting the power MOSFET data sheet SOA graph,
we note that the IRLZ34 is capable of delivering 62.5A at a
drain-to-source voltage of 3.12V for approximately 10ms.
An RC time constant can now be calculated which satisfies
this requirement:
RC =
In 1 −VSEN
RSEN •IMAX
⎡
⎣
⎢
⎢
⎤
⎦
⎥
⎥
RC =– 0.01
In 1 −0.10
0.030 •62.5
⎡
⎣
⎢
⎤
⎦
⎥
=– 0.01/– 0.054
=182ms
This time constant should be viewed as a maximum
safe delay time and should be reduced if the competing
requirement of starting a high inrush current load is less
stringent; i.e., if the inrush time period is calculated at
20ms, the RC time constant should be set at roughly two
or three times this time period and not at the maximum
of 182ms. A 60ms time constant would be produced
with a 270k resistor and a 0.22µF capacitor (as shown in
Figure 1).
If the output is shorted to ground, the current through
the FET rises rapidly and is limited by the RDS(ON) of the
FET, the drain sense resistor and the series resistance
between the power supply and the FET. Series resistance