Miniature Power Supply: Infineon's First Flip-Chip Production Designed for Automotive Applications

By Tiera Oliver

Associate Editor

Embedded Computing Design

January 28, 2020

News

Miniature Power Supply: Infineon's First Flip-Chip Production Designed for Automotive Applications

The higher power density enables a significantly smaller footprint than conventional package technologies.

Infineon Technologies AG is taking the next step towards smallest power supply devices for automotive electronics. The company set up a production process for flip-chip. Infineon launches the first respective product: the linear voltage regulator OPTIREG TLS715B0NAV50.

With flip-chip technology, the ICs are installed upside down in the package. With the heated part of the IC facing the bottom of the package and being closer to the PCB, thermal inductance can be improved by a factor between 2 and 3. The higher power density enables a significantly smaller footprint than conventional package technologies.

The footprint of Infineon's new linear voltage regulator (TSNP-7-8 package, 2.0 mm x 2.0 mm) is more than 60 percent smaller than that of an established reference product (TSON-10 package, 3.3 mm x 3.3 mm) while the thermal resistance stays the same. This makes the device particularly suitable for applications with limited board space, such as radar and cameras. The OPTIREG TLS715B0NAV50 provides 5 V with a maximum output current capability of 150 mA.

Flip-chip technology has been used in consumer and industrial markets for several years. Due to increasingly strict space requirements, particularly in the growing number of radar and camera systems, also automotive electronics require smaller power supply solutions, although with much higher quality requirements. In order to offer best-in-class flip-chip quality Infineon does not rely on a subsequent qualification of existing consumer and industrial products but rather on a dedicated production process for automotive devices.

In the future, flip-chip technology will strengthen Infineon’s portfolio of automotive power supply products in the OPTIREG family. The chipmaker is planning to apply it also to its switch mode voltage regulators and power management ICs.

Availability

The OPTIREG™ TLS715B0NAV50 is now available. Further information is available at www.infineon.com/tls715b0na-v50

Tiera Oliver, Associate Editor for Embedded Computing Design, is responsible for web content edits, product news, and constructing stories. She also assists with newsletter updates as well as contributing and editing content for ECD podcasts and the ECD YouTube channel. Before working at ECD, Tiera graduated from Northern Arizona University where she received her B.S. in journalism and political science and worked as a news reporter for the university’s student led newspaper, The Lumberjack.

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