Electronic Products - January 2019

Batteries PRODUCT ROUNDUP 31

IMAGE: ALIX PAULTRE

Rechargeable batteries

need advanced power

management and control

Sophisticated charging and

power management systems

deliver performance and

reliability gains

BY ALIX PAULTRE

Contributing Writer

E

nergy storage is a significant en-

abler for a great many application

spaces. Today’s information-based

cloud-enabled society runs on batteries.

Most industrial systems and all fossil-fuel

vehicles use batteries for backup power,

and next-generation methods of storing

and shifting energy will be a critical aspect

of the smart grid. The growth of electric ve-

hicles (EVs) has also created a huge market

for large-scale battery charging (Fig. 1).

These batteries come in a variety of

chemistries, form factors, and output

voltages but have one common denom-

inator (beyond the obvious one). They

all eventually stop delivering power and

must be recharged or recycled. Recharg-

ing batteries has developed into a major

application space with a wide palette of

advanced solutions available.

Battery chargers fall broadly into two

types: those that are mounted inside the

product and those that have separate

packaging and are deployed external-

ly. Internal chargers are almost always

DC-input devices, and just about every

external charger accepts a 110-V or

220-V AC input. The general deployment

for a portable device is an internal DC/

DC battery charger driven by an external

AC/DC power adapter.

On the board

Board-level charging is a very busy space,

as every portable electronic device needs

onboard power management. The Internet

of Things has created a market for a pletho-

ra of small single-board RF-capable devices

with a button battery in an onboard clip.

There are a lot of power management ICs

(PMICs) available to manage and recharge

that battery, and the performance of the

charging circuit has a direct impact on the

life and reliability of the battery used.

A battery charge management

controller like Microchip Technology’s

MCP73830L Li-ion linear charger serves

these types of low-charge current appli-

cations. Currents as low as 20 mA can be

Fig. 1: The growth of EVs has also created a huge market for large-scale battery charging.

ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS • electronicproducts.com • JANUARY 2019