Hammy said:
While they do have some decent low Vce sat BJT's they are pricey. They
also don't make the best high speed switches without elaborate drive
circuits. Onsemi offers similar low Vce sat BJT's for about half the
price.
Just searching for them turns up lots of similar parts. I found the KSC5001
one time, IIRC that's 20V 7A, hFE > 80 and Vce(sat) < 0.3V at 7A, hFE = 80!
Hell, all the Zetex parts were spec'd for hFE = 10 (though they do just fine
as high as 100). Plus, it's in a DPAK, so unlike anything Zetex, it can
actually handle momentary overload. ;-)
There are some particularly interesting CCFL driver transistors out there
for laptop use. 80V 5A and similar hFE and Vce(sat) comes to mind. They're
as good as the SWITCHMODE series e.g. MJE13003 but with lower Vceo and
correspondingly better performance.
And there's all those MOSFETs, like the D2PAKs littered over any
motherboard. Pretty nice performance from them, too.
And IGBT prices keep falling. This is an excellent age for transistors.
Tim