High Voltage Transistors and Creepage Requirements

Thread Starter

tindel

Joined Sep 16, 2012
936
I'm currently working on a product for Pollution Degree 2, Material Group II, at a peak working voltage of 200V (150V, actually, but I want some margin). Therefore, I need a creepage of at least 1.4mm on all of my parts with large voltages across them (per IEC60950). Problem is that most of the 'high voltage' transistors on the market have creepages on the order of 1 or 1.1mm or less.

Here's a good example. MSB92WT1G. Advertised as a 300V SOT-323 transistor. If you follow the recommended footprint, the creepage is 1.0mm. Using this product in my design would violate the requirements. In fact, this part would only be good up to about 100V.

Any ideas here? Only thing I can think of is getting a much large transistor at a much higher cost both in transistor price and board real estate, even though a SOT-323 is perfectly capable of getting the job done. I suppose I could also conformal coat the board. That seems silly to do for three parts out of about 50.
 

Deleted member 440916

Joined Dec 31, 1969
0
Had you thought of slotting the pcb, that is common practice to resolve similar problems.
 

Picbuster

Joined Dec 2, 2013
1,047
I'm currently working on a product for Pollution Degree 2, Material Group II, at a peak working voltage of 200V (150V, actually, but I want some margin). Therefore, I need a creepage of at least 1.4mm on all of my parts with large voltages across them (per IEC60950). Problem is that most of the 'high voltage' transistors on the market have creepages on the order of 1 or 1.1mm or less.

Here's a good example. MSB92WT1G. Advertised as a 300V SOT-323 transistor. If you follow the recommended footprint, the creepage is 1.0mm. Using this product in my design would violate the requirements. In fact, this part would only be good up to about 100V.

Any ideas here? Only thing I can think of is getting a much large transistor at a much higher cost both in transistor price and board real estate, even though a SOT-323 is perfectly capable of getting the job done. I suppose I could also conformal coat the board. That seems silly to do for three parts out of about 50.
the transistor mentioned has a distance of 1 mm approx between Emitter and Collector.
The max voltage between basis and emitter = 5V.
I do not see a problem however coating the PCB is always a good practice to avoid damp and rubbish between conductors.

Picbuster
 

Hymie

Joined Mar 30, 2018
1,274
Why do you need basic insulation across the transistor?

The semiconductor device (transistor) cannot be considered to provide basic insulation because should the transistor fail short circuit, any safety function provided by the transistor will be defeated.

The product safety standard (60950-1) allows substandard creepage distances on the proviso that with the creepage distance short circuited – does not create a hazard.
 

butthead

Joined Oct 21, 2018
36
This is almost year old now, but I got curious. I think he are looking for functional isolation and not basic isolation. FI are the isolation is needed for proper isolation. Slotting PCB helps for creepage along the PCB surface, but not for creepage along the component itself. So I am also interesred in the answer.
 
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