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Presented yearly, the Product-of-the-Year awards are bestowed by the editors of Electronic Products on those new products they feel are among the most significant of the thousands of new products introduced during the year.

For applications that require the very highest standard of precision, Vishay's new-generation VHP100 is the first and only resistor on the market to stay within a 30-ppm max. resistance variation over the entire military temperature range of - 55 °C to + 125 °C. This means that the device’s resistance value will never deviate by more than 30 ppm (0.003 %) total.

Furthermore, all VHP100 resistors will automatically maintain maximum temperature-related ratios of 60 ppm (0.006 %) over the entire temperature range regardless of whether the resistors are all at different temperatures and whether the different temperatures are caused by environmental temperature variations, locally different heat generated by adjacent power components, or even self heating in power dissipation. Similarly, model VHP101 maintains a maximum spread of 10 ppm total over the instrument range of + 15 °C to + 45 °C.

In addition to its low TCR, the VHP100 provides tight tolerances to ± 0.005 % (50 ppm) and a load-life stability of ± 0.005 % (50 ppm) typical for 2,000 hours at + 70 °C and 0.3 W. An even tighter tolerance to ± 0.001 % (10 ppm) is available on request.

Vishay’s VHP100 offers an immediate answer to many challenging resistor applications previously thought to be unsolvable, including compact portable resistance standards, on-board resistance standards, feedback devices for operational amplifiers, precision voltage dividers, meter multipliers, precision bridge resistors, and decade voltage dividers. As a result, the devices open entirely new areas of design where the use of resistors had not been considered.

The ability of the VHP100 to minimize changes in resistance when the resistor is subjected to stress factors (mounting, handling, shock, and vibration) ensures ultra-high performance for tight metrology specifications. As applications requiring this level of performance also require immunity to humidity, the device features a hermetically sealed metal and glass enclosure to protect the resistive element, and is oil filled to improve the thermal dissipation path to the outside.

The VHP100 resistor offers a resistance range of 100 ohms to 150 kilohms and a shelf-life stability of ± 0.0002 % (2 ppm) typical through at least six years. Vishay Foil resistors are not restricted to standard values, and can be supplied with “as required” values (e.g. 1.2345 kilohms vs. 1 kilohm) at no extra cost or delivery time.

While other resistor technologies can take several seconds or even minutes to achieve a steady-state thermal stabilization, the VHP100 utilizes a unique manufacturing process that results in thermal stabilization time of less than 1 second, and a 1.0-ns rise time, essentially without ringing.

With its extremely tight specifications, the VHP100 is virtually a secondary standard that can be carried in sets for daily or periodic calibration of factory measurement equipment. The VHP100 is also available with laboratory- and metrology-level precision and long-term stability with additional in-house oriented processes. These include chip stabilization, special TCR plotting, additional treatments for ultra-stability, and special post-manufacturing operations (PMO), such as temperature cycling, short-time overload, and accelerated load life, which are uniquely applicable to Bulk Metal Foil resistors.

Special construction allows the devices’ copper leads to pass through a glass seal to the outside of the enclosure. This positions the more malleable solder-coated copper leads on the outside of the package and minimizes the thermal EMF at the internal termination-to-resistor junction assembly.

With the VHP100, only a minimal shift in resistance value will occur during its entire lifetime. Most of this shift takes place during the first few hundred hours of operation and can be eliminated by PMO; virtually no change is noted thereafter. The overall solution cost is thus lowered, since the very high stability of the VHP100 allows designers to eliminate other passive and semiconductor components that would otherwise be needed to compensate for the lower stability provided by other resistor technologies.

In addition to its excellent stability characteristics, the VHP100 withstands electrostatic discharges of up to 25 kV for increased reliability and offers a non-inductive (less than 0.08 microhenries), non-capacitive design. The VHP100 offers current noise limit of less than 0.010 microvolts (RMS) per volt of applied voltage (less than or equal to -40 dB), thermal EMF of 0.05 microvolts per deg. Celsius typical, and a low voltage coefficient of less than 0.1 ppm/V.