Bourns Introduces Shielded Power Inductors for Compact, High-Current Automotive and DC-DC Designs

Bourns has released three new shielded power inductor series, the SRP2010PA, SRP2510PA, and SRP2512PA, aimed at automotive and DC-DC conversion circuits that need to handle high current in tight spaces.

The core challenge these address is a familiar tension in power electronics: as current requirements go up, designers also need to shield against electromagnetic interference (EMI) and keep components low-profile enough to fit compact layouts, and those goals often pull in opposite directions. Bourns approach combines a metal-alloy powder core, which allows the inductor to handle higher current before saturating, with a shielded construction that contains the magnetic field rather than letting it radiate outward and interfere with nearby components. The result, according to the company, is an inductor that can handle more current in a smaller footprint without generating the kind of magnetic field leakage that would normally require more space or additional shielding elsewhere in the design.

Edward Liu, Bourns product line manager for magnetics, said the combination of the metal-alloy core and shielded structure is what allows the SRP-PA series to support higher current handling in low-profile designs without a corresponding increase in magnetic field radiation.

On the specifics, the series offers shielded construction to reduce EMI, a metal-alloy powder ...