How do you know? How do you know what? It could be how do you know if that new restaurant has good food, or how do you know that the car you’re about to buy isn’t a lemon. It could be a question of how do you know that the cigarettes you’re smoking will mess your lungs up. Wait. You do know that answer to that one.
But I’m talking more about substitutions. When choosing a part, there are a wide variety of parameters to check. Some mater for your design and some don’t. If you run into a part that exactly matches all of your parameters, you’ll probably be okay. If that specific part is in short supply, how do you go about finding a suitable substitution?
A good example is the CDBW0520-G, Schottky diode. I had used that part in the past because it was physically small enough (SOD123) and had the stats I need. I pulled that same part number out of an old BoM to use in a new design. When I went online to check the price, I found that they were almost out of stock. I remembered when I originally searched for that part, I had a lot of trouble finding anything in that particular package. I could go to a physically bigger part, but I really didn’t want to. Space isn’t super tight, but tight enough.
I needed as low a forward voltage as possible, and this part drops just over a third of a volt and can pass half an amp through. My first instinct was to look at higher current versions, but they all had bigger packages. Next, I looked within the same manufacturer for a higher voltage part. I found one with a 40V max in the same SOD123. That was fine. The original was 20V.
The only bummer was that the CDBW0540-G drops half a volt. Not a great difference, but when your supply is 3V, you need to keep as much as possible. For some reason, a few days later, I searched for the part again and must have taken a different route down the parametric search because I found one from a different manufacturer with 340mV drop and a package just a hair smaller. And, it has a higher current rating to boot. That makes me happy and content.
Duane Benson
…because I live in a split level head.