Vishay Precision Group, Inc. announced that its Vishay Foil Resistors product line (VFR) has introduced two new ultra-high-precision Bulk Metal Z-Foil current sensing resistors designed to improve LED brightness and efficiency in portable battery-powered applications. The LED1625 and LED221 provide low TCR of 0.05 ppm/°C nominal (0°C to +60°C) and 0.2 ppm/°C nominal (-55°C to +125°C,+25°C ref.), load-life stability of ±0.005%, and tight tolerances to ±0.01%.
In LED-backlit LCD displays for portable devices, screen brightness is a very important function. Brightness is controlled via an LED panel mounted on the rear of the LCD, which boosts the input voltage — usually coming from a Li-ion battery — connected to the panel. A boost converter converts the input voltage to dozens of volts for the LED panel’s operation. To avoid brightness flickering and to control the stability of the LED output voltage, stable and precise current resistors with low thermal EMF and low absolute TCR are required.
“Battery life is critical in portable battery-powered applications, so for an LED driver to be useful, it must be efficient,” said Hero Faierstain, senior manager, application engineering, for VFR. “Power efficiency is largely determined by the precision of the 4-terminal current sensing resistor and brightness control. The amount of input power required to generate the desired LED brightness can be determined by dividing the power in the LEDs by the input power. Defining the efficiency in this way means that the power dissipated in the current sensing resistor contributes to the power lost in the power supply. Therefore, it is very important to use high-precision current sense resistors, such as the LED1625 and LED221.”
The LED1625 offers a 1 W power rating and a resistance range from 0.3 Ω to 10 Ω, while the LED221 features power ratings to 8 W and a resistance range from 0.5 Ω to 500 Ω. Any conceivable value within the devices’ resistance ranges, to six digits, is available with no additional cost or lead time effect. The resistors offer PCR (or ΔR due to self-heating) of 5 ppm at rated power.