Gents, I am a beginner in understanding and designing electronic circuits. I recently designed a circuit for a little project and I run into an issue of blowing my 12V to 3.3V DC-DC converter chip by connecting a LiPo battery. I had no issues using some thin wires on the bench testing the whole circuit up and down, but after adding some thicker wires with less resistance my TI TPS621672 converter chip catched fire ... tried multiple times with multiple boards of the same

I do think I have an inrush current issue here, charging the 10uF capacitor at the first place. This also creates some sparks while connecting the battery. What is the best method of reducing this inrush current? I did find different suggestions like the following:
- PTC fuses
- Simple series resistor
- soft start circuit
- Zener diode
Target solution should draw only very little additional current (<50uA), as I am running for months on battery with this project. What holds me off using a resistor - SMD resistors in packages max. 1206 do only provide 1/4 watt (only limited PCB space available) and I struggle to calculate the right balance between max wattage and not to affect charging capability of the capacitor and may affect converter stability.
Using PTC may also not work 100%, as they are very slow until they trip, as far as I can tell from reading the datasheets. Soft start circuit may draw additional power and is unknown to me how to design it appropriately. I did tried adding a 15V zener diode to clamp voltage spikes that may occur during current rush, but that didn't helped either, still magic smoke.
Any suggesting is highly appreciated
