• E-Fuses Grow Up and Go Industrial You’re undoubtedly familiar with the electronic-fuse (e-fuse) ICs that first appeared about 15 to 20 years ago and are now widely used in circuits and systems. • These early e-fuses functioned as simple, resettable (or self-resetting) fuses. • Their basic function was similar to the time-tested thermal fuse (Figures 1a and 1b), which would open the circuit path and stop current flow under overcurrent conditions, but-and it’s a big but-these thermal fuses needed to be physically replaced. • That characteristic was either a virtue or a vice, depending on the application and the people tending to fuse replacement. • The rapid adoption of electronics in cars and the extraordinary growth of data centers spurred the use of e-fuses. • In the automotive case, the motivation was to avoid having to get in there and replace a fuse, likely buried somewhere in the cramped car, that had blown due to a problem elsewhere in the vehicle or as a result of a transient.
Article Summaries:
- You’re undoubtedly familiar with the electronic-fuse (e-fuse) ICs that first appeared about 15 to 20 years ago and are now widely used in circuits and systems. These early e-fuses functioned as simple, resettable (or self-resetting) fuses. Their basic function was similar to the time-tested thermal fuse (Figures 1a and 1b), which would open the circuit path and stop current flow under overcurrent conditions, but-and it’s a big but-these thermal fuses needed to be physically replaced. That characteristic was either a virtue or a vice, depending on the application and the people tending to fuse
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