AN 1596-APPLICATION NOTE VIPower : HIGH SIDE DRIVERS FOR AUTOMOTIVE

Today’s automotive market requires a continuous increasing of complexity and reliability in the electronic systems. To achieve this, the concept of the automotive systems is more and more based on micro controllers architecture driving integrated monolithic circuits that include a power stage, control, driving and protection circuits on the same chip. Vertical Intelligent Power, a STMicroelectronics patented technology, established over 13 years ago, uses a fabrication process which allows the integration of complete digital and/or analog control circuits driving a vertical power transistor on the same chip. The VIPower M0 technology used for making High Side Drivers (HSDs) produces a monolithic silicon chip, which combines control and protection circuitry with a standard power MOSFET structure where the power stage current flows vertically through the silicon (see figure 1).