Current sensors with insulation reinforced to UL/IEC 62368-1

“Until now, MLX91220 and MLX91221 had only been qualified as a basic, single barrier, isolation device, mandating the need for an engineer to incorporate extra elements like an isolation amplifier into their design,” according to the company.

The UL/IEC 62368-1 certification (material group I, for a pollution degree 2) for both parts is:

• SOIC8 package: 715V basic isolation, 307V reinforced isolation
• SOIC16 package: 1,415V basic isolation, 707V reinforced isolation

“Applications requiring reinforced isolation include on-board chargers, and air conditioning compressors,” said Melexis. “Additionally, for designs that currently have only basic isolation, it provides the possibility of re-qualifying as a reinforced isolated system without any change in the bill-of-materials.”

The current sensors come in SOIC8 narrow bodies with 4mm creepage and SOIC16 wide-body packages with 8mm creepage.

Both devices have a 300kHz bandwidth and 2μs response time. Versions are available to read up to 50Arms.

This are not the first parts that Melexis has re-qualified.

“We have upgraded 50 product variants at no cost to the customer,” said company product director Bruno Boury.

Product web pages:
MLX91220
MLX91221

An earlier version of this article included the words: “To guarantee the safety and isolation of high voltage class 3 energy sources, such as 800V EV battery packs…”. This sentence was removed because, alone, none of the products mentioned above can provide reinforced insulation to an 800V battery.