It is very difficult to allocate semiconductor products to find drop-in replacements, especially when visualising the pin diagrams and footprint information complexity. The packaging information is not consistent, meaning ones cannot use direct parametric similarity. It varies from manufacturer to manufacturer e.g first manufacturer labels the package “DO-214AC”, second manufacturer may use “DO-214AC (SMA)” and the third manufacturer may use “SMA (DO-214AC)”. All these packages seem to be the same with naked eye but on distributor websites the parametric filtering process is greatly hindered. The manufacturer cross-reference tools of TVS Diodes can be useful but they are not up to date and give cross-reference from their own catalog. This problem is best resolved if they are up to date and the catalog of distributors is comprehensive. There are different types of diodes but this article focused on the automated method of TVS Diodes cross-reference. 

Traditional Method of TVS Diode Cross-Referencing  

There are two steps involved in usual practice for finding replacement parts of TVS Diode i.e. comparing the catalog manually from different manufacturers and secondly comparing the datasheet values for particular parts. Firstly for an engineer it is necessary to check and confirm that the two parts have the same PCB footprints. The length, width and the number of pins of footprint diagrams must be manually verified if two parts have not the clear packaging information. This is the first step after which engineers compared the electrical specifications. Peak pulse current, breakdown voltage, clamping voltage, polarity, working voltage and the power rating are the electrical specifications that need to be compared. The process is repeated again and again for each cross-reference and consumes a lot of time and money.

Automating the TVS Diode Cross-Referencing Process by Using SourcingBot Cross-Reference Tool

Engineers can use the automated tool for calculating the replacement part automatically instead of using traditional TVS Diodes cross-reference process if the above discussed packaging information problem is resolved. The sourcingBot engineers mapped the manufacturers specific package to generic packages and designed the automated tool to find the replacement. Searching the individual parts by using the search tab on sourcingBot website, engineers will get the top replacement parts as well as their specifications. For example, if an engineer searches 824500361 Wurth Electronics then the following cross-references are shown.

Transparent matching score has been used in the entire process and easily compared the top parameters by an eye. There are 50 different matches shown if engineers visit the further pages that are listed at the bottom of this page. Therefore, very little effort in less time is required by an engineer to create a large list of replacement parts. If we consider this example, there are 50 replacements from eight manufacturers i.e. Bourns, Littelfuse, ON Semiconductor, Vishay etc..

The entire bill of material can also be automatically cross-referenced by using the SourcingBot saas service online. The process is really simple, engineers have to upload a bill of materials at sourcingbot.com/xref-tool to get started. Engineers can get the replacements from all manufacturers or list of manufacturers very easily. Other than TVS diodes, cross-references of many other passive components like capacitors, inductors and resistors as well as different categories of connectors like terminal blocks, circular connectors, FFC and FPC can be calculated by using SourcingBot.