BS170 Mosfet equivalent for PWM application

You are looking for the Gate Threshold Voltage, marked Vgs(th) in the datasheet. There is a bit of a catch to watch out for here though.

For this particular MOSFET, if we look at the relevant bit of the datasheet:

We can see it's given as a minimum of 0.6V, and a maximum of 1.2V. This looks promising for your 1.8V logic output. However, the catch is that this is for a drain current of only 250uA, so it's not of much practical use, since we'll need more than that to pull the PMOS gate low with the 4.7kΩ resistor, we need to make sure the drain current is acceptable at 1.8V.
To get a better idea of what voltage we need at the gate to sink useful currents at the drain, we would usually need to take a look at the graphs for Id over Vgs and Id over Vds for different gate voltages is also useful:

Unfortunately both only goes as low as a gate voltage of 2.25V, so we don't really know how much current the drain will sink at 1.8V. Since at 2.25V Id is over 10A, it's a reasonably safe bet that at 1.8V we'll be fine sinking 3.3V / 4.7kΩ = 0.7mA, but we can't be certain, which is ideally what we need to be.

Solution options:

• Use a different N-ch MOSFET with a guaranteed drain current of over 0.7mA at 1.8V Vgs given in the datasheet.
• Use any small NPN transistor which has a Vbe of ~0.7V and will be turned on easily with 1.8V (with current limiting base resistor of course. For a gain of e.g. 100, assuming you want to pull as low as possible, calculate using (1.8V - 0.7V) / (0.7 / 100) = ~150kΩ, then halve this to compensate for gain reduction at saturation, e.g. 75kΩ or less. Another conservative rule of thumb is to assume a gain of 20-30)
• Do your own tests with a few IRLML2502s and confirm there is more than enough drain current at a Vgs of 1.8V.
• Increase R2, so less current is needed to pull the gate down.

Personally I'd go for using an NPN, since it's cheaper - you could get a suitable part for a couple of pence, compared to the 33 pence for the MOSFET.
For sticking with this part though, unless you need fast switching, or there is a lot of noise present, I'd probably go for simply increasing R2, to around 15kΩ, so you only have to sink 3.3V / 20kΩ = 220uA. This is less than the value given at a max of 1.2Vgs, so you can be certain it will be able to pull the gate down easily.

One other possible option which I use regularly is to use an IO in open drain mode - many microcontrollers have certain pins which are tolerant of higher voltages than their supply voltage, so if your micro has a 3.3V tolerant pin which can be used in open drain mode (you don't give the part number so I can't check this, although you may have done so already) then you can do away with Q1 completely and use this instead.

The 12V and 6A is a good starting point. This tells me you need a mosfet with a max drain-source voltage capability greater than 12V so 20V would be a minimum criteria for this.

You want to switch 6A and you'll want it to do so with minimum volt-drop - just like a relay contact so you are looking for Rds(on) below (say) 0.1 ohms. This means at 6A it will develop a small voltage across the device of 0.6V (ohms law).

However, that will produce a power disippation of 6 x 6 x 0.1 W = 3.6W so if you are looking for a surface mount device you would prefer a lower disippation of maybe 0.5W max.

This means Rds(on) would be more like 0.014 ohms.

So far, your application needs a 20V transistor, capable of switching 6A with an on resistance no more than 0.014 ohms.

Vgs is "like" the coil voltage on a relay - it's how much voltage you need to apply to the coil to get it to switch BUT for a FET it's a linear thing and, if you don't apply enough voltage, the mosfet will not turn on properly - its on-resistance will be too high, it'll get warm under load and have a volt or two across it when you want a nice low resistance.

You then need to inspect the details of the spec to see how much you need to apply to guarantee the low on-resistance you want. A bit more on this further down.

The IRFZ44N has on the front page of the data sheet: -

Vdss = 55V, Rds(on) = 17.5 milli ohms and Id = 49A

It's not a surface mount device therefore a little more heat generated isn't going to matter too much (with a heatsink) so it'll do what you want it to do but I'd research a device with smaller Vds (say 20V) and you'll probably find one with a lot less than 10 milli ohms on resistance.

If you look at the electrical characteristics on page 2 you'll see that the 17.5 milli ohms on resistance requires a 10V drive voltage on the gate (3rd line down in the table). Less than this drive level and the on-resistance rises as would the heat produced.

At this point I can't decide for you any more but I think you might be looking for a device that will operate from logic levels. In which case the IRFZ44N won't do.

The STB36NF06L is a little higher with the on-resistance but the spec does suggest it will work from a 5V drive on the gate - see electrical characteristics (ON) but i'd still be tempted to find one that is more suitable.

I'd be tempted by this. The PH2520U is a 20V, 100A, 2.7 milli ohm device when the gate voltage is 4.5V. If your logic levels are 3V3 check figure 9 to see it will work well at 3V3.

One last thought about things - you are wanting to PWM a load and if the frequency is high you'll find that the gate capacitance takes some drive current into the gate to get it moving up and down quickly. Sometimes it better to trade off on-resistance to find a device with lower Vgs capacitance. You're into horse-trading now. Keep as low as you can on switching frequency and it should drive ok from a 5V logic pin.