The VN5E160AS-E is a single-channel high-side driver manufactured in the ST proprietary VIPower™ M0-5 technology and housed in the tiny SO-8 package. The VN5E160AS-E is designed to drive 12 V automotive grounded loads delivering protection, diagnostics and easy 3 V and 5 V CMOS compatible interface with any microcontroller.

The device integrates advanced protective functions such as load current limitation, inrush and overload active management by power limitation, overtemperature shut-off withauto-restart and overvoltage active clamp. A dedicated analog current sense pin is associated with every output channel in order to provide ehnanced diagnostic functions including fast detection of overload and short-circuit to ground through power limitation indication,overtemperature indication, short-circuit to VCCdiagnosis and ON & OFF state open-load detection. The current sensing and diagnostic feedback of the whole device can be disabled by pulling the CS_DIS pin high to allow sharing of the external sense resistor with other similar devices.