Accurate, Compact, and Power-Efficient Li-Ion Battery Charger Circuit

A novel, accurate, compact, and power-efficient lithium-ion (Li-Ion) battery charger designed to yield maximum capacity, cycle life, and therefore runtime is presented and experimentally verified. The proposed charger uses a diode to smoothly (i.e., continuously) transition between two high-gain linear feedback loops and control a single power MOS device, automatically charging the battery with constant current and then constant voltage. An adaptive power-efficient charging scheme in the form of a cascaded switching regulator supply ensures the voltage across the charging power-intensive pMOS remains low, thereby reducing its power losses and yielding up to 27% better overall power efficiency. An 83% power-efficient printed circuit board prototype was built and used to charge several Li-Ion batteries to within plusmn0.43% of their optimum full-charge voltage and therefore within a negligibly small fraction of their full capacity