Destroyed 2 arduinos trying to drive high current motor with mosfets.

[suicidaleggroll]

Sure, but you can't sort or filter the thousands of fets on a distributor's site by datasheet plots.  You can filter by Vgs(th).  If you know your drive voltage, cut it in half and look for fets with a Vgs(th) at or below that number.

[RoGeorge]

Sure, but you can't sort or filter the thousands of fets on a distributor's site by datasheet plots.  You can filter by Vgs(th).  If you know your drive voltage, cut it in half and look for fets with a Vgs(th) at or below that number.

Or, just lower the transistor's Vgs(th) like this: https://hackaday.io/project/16616-your-mosfet-is-not-good-enough-then-modify-it 

[BloodyCactus]

If your connecting this to arduino, I'd use IRL540 instead of IRF540. IRL is logic level, can be triggered by the arduino just fine, IRF need a driver like MCP1407 (which I love using!). Arduino doesnt have the current to drive IRF properly. Get IRL540 instead.

[janoc]

Sure, but you can't sort or filter the thousands of fets on a distributor's site by datasheet plots.  You can filter by Vgs(th).  If you know your drive voltage, cut it in half and look for fets with a Vgs(th) at or below that number.

Most distributors permit filtering for logic FETs already. E.g. Digikey, filter by FET Feature, select Logic Level Gate, you can even choose the voltage.

[suicidaleggroll]

Sure, but you can't sort or filter the thousands of fets on a distributor's site by datasheet plots.  You can filter by Vgs(th).  If you know your drive voltage, cut it in half and look for fets with a Vgs(th) at or below that number.

Most distributors permit filtering for logic FETs already. E.g. Digikey, filter by FET Feature, select Logic Level Gate, you can even choose the voltage.

Which knocks out a significant number of options that are "logic level" but aren't classified as such on the distributor's site.  I used that logic level filtering feature on Digikey's site all of one time, and quickly realized that using 2x Vgs(th) was a far better option for finding suitable parts.

[tatus1969]

A decent rule of thumb is you need to drive the gate to at least 2x Vgs(th).  The IRF540n has a nominal Vgs(th) of around 3V, max of 4V.  This means you should be driving the gate with at least 8V to guarantee it'll work well, but you might be able to go lower if you hand-pick a device out of a batch that has a threshold closer to nominal or min.

An even better solution is looking at the characteristics in the datasheet. The plots are fairly explicit, IMO.

Look at the max Rdson spec in the datasheet. If that says, for example, 1mOhm max at Vgs=5V, then you can expect this as a worst case value at room temperature. Then combine this with the Rdson vs temperature graph (normally a multiplier), and you get a final value and can calculate the static power dissipation.

[Ian.M]

While the diversion into finding logic level MOSFETs in distributors' parametric search pages is interesting, and useful to many of us, it is of little use to the O.P. and their 14V, 12A motor.

Logic level MOSFETs without a proper H-bridge driver with dead-band control will make the O.P.'s problems worse as they will drastically increase the shoot-through current spikes, and if you use a H-bridge driver, from a 12 or 14V rail, you'll have plenty of gate drive for ordinary MOSFETs.

[janoc]

While the diversion into finding logic level MOSFETs in distributors' parametric search pages is interesting, and useful to many of us, it is of little use to the O.P. and their 14V, 12A motor.

Logic level MOSFETs without a proper H-bridge driver with dead-band control will make the O.P.'s problems worse as they will drastically increase the shoot-through current spikes, and if you use a H-bridge driver, from a 12 or 14V rail, you'll have plenty of gate drive for ordinary MOSFETs.

Even ATMega/ATTiny timers have support for things like generating dead time for driving H bridges, if I remember right, at least on some AVRs (ATTiny85 for sure). Alternatively, you can do it in software by simply moving the output compare values a little, as described in this app note from Atmel:
http://www.atmel.com/Images/doc8010.pdf

So you really don't need to use a driver only for the dead time generation.

Of course, driver would be useful for making sure the FET turns on and off quickly, the MCU pin driver may not be able to source/sink sufficient current.