Micronas presents market’s first ISO 26262 compliant, low-power Hall switch family in SOT23 package

With the HAL 15xy, Micronas introduces the successor of the HAL 5xy family, which is well-known for a long time on the market for excellent quality and highest reliability, proven by a large installed customer base worldwide and widely used today in all premium car brands.

Freiburg, May 5, 2014 – Micronas (SIX Swiss Exchange: MASN), known and recognized in the automotive and industrial business as a global partner for intelligent, sensor-based system solutions, today announces the extension of its Hall-effect sensor portfolio by the new HAL 15xy switch family for a broad variety of automotive applications operating under harshest environmental conditions from –40 °C up to 150 °C ambient temperature.

With HAL 15xy, the customer can choose from a 3-wire version with short-circuit protected open-drain output or a 2-wire version with current source interface as well as from a wide range of different temperature-compensated constant switching points. All CMOS wafer processing for HAL 15xy is performed at Micronas facilities in Freiburg (Germany) to ensure best quality and highest flexibility. Micronas produced its first Hall switch back in 1993 and since then has been supplying the automotive market with more than 1.5 billion switches for a very wide variety of automotive applications.

Today, new safety criteria challenge even the smallest components in automotive applications regarding functional and process monitoring. In order to fulfill such enhanced functional safety requirements, Micronas now provides its new HAL 15xy family. This first generation of ASIL A ready Hall-effect switches on the market has been developed with a single-point fault metric greater than 60% according to the latest ISO 26262 standard.

In addition, HAL 15xy features an extremely low current consumption of only 1.6 mA to address the further demanding low-power demands. In combination with the minimum supply voltage of 2.7 V, the HAL 15xy holds a leading position in terms of power consumption among Hall sensors for automotive applications. The device can be operated with a maximum supply voltage of 24 V, provides an overvoltage protection capability of up to 40 V and withstands ESD pulses up to 8 kV.

HAL 15xy provides many new diagnostic features, allowing a deployment in ASIL A, B and higher classified automotive applications. For even more stringent security requirements, the HAL 15xy features an additional, unique power-on self-test. It can optionally be enabled by the customer for a full functional test of the sensors’ signal processing path and output before starting standard operation.

For easiest design-in, the HAL 15xy is available in the very small SOT23 package with a footprint design and body dimensions according to the JEDEC standard.

For product documentation and IC samples please contact Micronas’ sales offices or one of its distribution partners listed on www.micronas.tdk.com/sales.