Pulse Withstanding Resistors

One of the most significant market drivers in the resistor industry currently is the need for
pulse withstanding resistors. In some cases, design rules or time constraints may require
the design engineer to overdesign his circuit to accommodate a pulse event. In many
other cases, selecting the correct pulse withstanding resistor presents an opportunity to
reduce size, weight and cost of a design. It is important that design engineers dealing
with surge events understand the significant difference between pulse voltage
withstanding and pulse power withstanding resistors.

In the past, axial leaded resistors dominated the market. There was a variety of resistor
technologies that were used for pulse applications. Carbon composition was a
technology that was introduced many years ago and still used today. While this
technology lacks good precision and stability when compared to other technologies, there
are still applications where nothing works as well as a carbon comp resistor. Those
applications tend to have high surge energy requirements with a need for low inductance.
The application must also be able to tolerate a wide range of resistance shift due to
temperature, humidity, or even drift over time. Wirewounds represent another resistor
technology that has been around for many years, and their surge handling characteristics
are well known. Wirewounds can be built to withstand very high power pulses for short
durations with extremely little resistance shift; and in some cases can also withstand
relatively high voltage. Their inductance, however, is much higher than that of a carbon
comp device; even those which are non-inductively wound will still have inductance that
is too high for high speed switching power supplies. Neither technology is ideal for high
voltage pulses. Ceramic composition resistors are good at handling both high voltage and
high energy pulses; however, they are typically only available in 10% tolerances, have
limited sizes, are expensive, and their overall stability is inferior to wirewounds and film-
based resistors.
Aside from ceramic composition technology, axial leaded resistor options for high
voltage pulses usually employ a film element. That element is typically a thick film
material which is dipped on to cover the entire ceramic core surface or printed in a
serpentine pattern to achieve even higher voltage handling. This technology is
inexpensive and is a good choice for applications requiring three-watt power ratings or
less.

RPC 5% Single Pulse Power Capability

10,000
Pulse Power P (W)

1,000

100

2512
10
2010
1210
1206
0805
1
0.0001 0.001 0.01 0.1 1

Pulse Duration ti (s)

Thick film technology for surface mount applications has improved significantly in the
past few years. While it still remains useful only for applications requiring resistors with
continuous power ratings of 2 watts and less, there is significant market demand for
smaller, lower power, and surface mountable packages. Thick film surge withstanding
resistors that have no or limited laser calibration trimming are capable of handling more
than 4000 watts for a single pulse of less than 100 microseconds. In addition, 0805 size
pulse resistors can now handle more than 100 watts for the same duration, single pulse.
Standard thick film chip resistors will have a laser trim across the width of the part,
which can narrow the effective width of the resistive element by as much as 40%. In
addition, the amount of laser trimming can vary greatly from one manufacturing lot to
another and even from one part to another within the same lot. These variations result in
a corresponding variability in the pulse handling capability of these resistors and make
using standard thick film chip resistors for pulse handling situations problematic. Pulse
withstanding chip resistors are designed to maximize the usable width of the resistive
element. This design greatly reduces or completely eliminates the hot spot on the resistor
where current crowding occurs. That is the principle weak point and main limiting factor
in the pulse handling for chip resistors.
The high surge handling capability has made thick film pulse withstanding chip resistors
popular for applications that previously required a much more expensive technology.
Because of their relatively low cost and high availability, these thick film pulse
withstanding resistors can often be used to replace those more expensive parts, while still
reducing the overall PCB area used and the weight of the solution. Despite all these
advantages, care must be taken to ensure that the pulse voltage does not exceed the limits
of the technology. In addition, film resistors are still not an ideal choice for high-energy
applications, which require significant mass to absorb the energy pulses. However, many
emerging markets such as LED lighting, low power fuel cell & alternative energy
controls, and electric motor controls have made pulse withstanding film chip resistors one
of the fastest growing resistive products today.

A frequent question from design engineers is when to specify a part that can withstand
high pulse power or current, and when to use a part designed for high voltage. In the film
resistor world, this is a critical issue to understand, because the design of the resistive
element for each type is exactly opposite of the other. For high pulse power and pulse
current handling, the resistive element width is maximized, but for high voltage pulse
handling, the resistive element is designed to be long and narrow. Currently, there is a
good selection of low cost, medium voltage chip resistors available from various
manufacturers. These chip resistors will have the usual block-style resistive elements
replaced with a screen printable serpentine pattern. Extending the length of the resistive
element provides a proportional decrease in the voltage stress per unit length, hence
allowing higher voltage handling for a given chip size. Chip resistors using this
technology can handle up to 3000 continuous working volts and can achieve resistance
values up to 100M with 5% accuracy. Applications requiring extremely high voltage
handling, high resistance values, low VCR, high precision or some combination of these
require fine pitch serpentine resistive elements which aren’t achievable through screen
printing. These resistive elements must be directly written onto the ceramic substrate.
This type of thick film printing technique creates a precise and repeatable resistive trace
which has much lower noise and VCR compared to screen printed devices. Chip
resistors with this kind of resistive element can achieve resistance values up to
50Gigohms, and can maintain precise tolerances down to 0.5% and TCRs as low as 25
ppm. This level of precision is rarely seen in a thick film chip resistor and certainly not
from a high voltage chip resistor. Chip resistors of this type can handle high voltage
pulses of up to 40KV with proper terminal isolation to prevent arcing.
Finally, there are applications where resistors with low resistance values are subjected to
high voltage pulses. As stated earlier, ceramic composition resistors are a popular choice
here. However, many applications require power ratings or tolerances not currently
available from a ceramic composition part. For these situations, an axial leaded or
surface mount molded wirewound is a popular choice. Wirewound resistors can be
designed using element wire that has a thin coating on it to prevent arcing between
windings. Another solution is to select a wire alloy with a specific resistance per foot,
such that fewer turns are required to achieve the needed resistance, thereby widening the
gap between consecutive windings and increasing the voltage capability. In some cases,
an alloy can be utilized which increases the resistance per foot without reducing overall
wire mass, yielding a resistor with outstanding pulse voltage handling capabilities
without sacrificing its pulse power handling.

Pulse withstanding resistors are rapidly evolving into a dynamic market. Their
widespread use in emerging technology sectors is driving development for higher power
handling, higher voltage handling, and better precision. Carbon composition, thick film,
ceramic composition, and wirewound technologies all provide critical performance
benefits and will remain the core technologies used for future electrical products.