Battery-charger front-end IC improves charging-system safety

By Mao Ye, Applications Engineer, Battery Management Applications, Texas Instruments.

Battery-powered portable devices such as cellular phones have become an important part of people’s daily lives in the past few years. Many types of adapters are available to charge the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery and power the system, and their electrical specifications usually differ from one manufacturer to another. This challenges system designers to build portable devices that will meet safety and reliability requirements when used with different adapters. This article describes a new battery-charger front-end (CFE) IC, the Texas Instruments (TI) bq243xx, which is optimized to improve the safety of charging Li-ionpowered systems. Together with the battery-charger IC and the protection module in a battery pack, a charging system using the bq243xx CFE provides more robust system-level protection.