Fairchild'd eco-friendly battery charger reduces charge time and powers USB peripherals

USA: Today’s mobile devices are becoming powerful computing products, with an increasingly feature-rich, immersive user experience.

With the emergence of USB charging standards and the continuing trend for electronic devices, especially handsets, to be powered through the USB port, product designers are faced with the challenge of enabling advanced product features while quickly and safely charging high-capacity batteries and supporting connected peripherals.

Fairchild Semiconductor’s FAN54015 USB-compliant single-cell Li-ion switching charger provides designers a balance of safety, accuracy, efficiency, and solution size for charging mobile device batteries.  

To reduce charge time and mitigate heat dissipation, the FAN54015 switching charger employs a high-efficiency, eco-friendly, 3MHz DC-DC synchronous buck converter capable of supplying 1.45A. Additionally, to accommodate legacy and emerging lithium battery technologies, the regulated battery float voltage can be programmed from 3.5V to 4.44V. The device’s innovative system architecture allows reverse use of the switch-mode buck converter, resulting in a 500mA USB on-the-go (OTG) boost regulator, and providing power for USB peripherals.

To protect the battery and maximize mobile device usage time, the FAN54015 device supports battery charging in three phases: pre-conditioning, constant current (CC), and constant voltage (CV). An integrated over-voltage protection (OVP) FET blocks current flow when the input voltage reaches dangerous levels, eliminating the need for an external protection MOSFET and thereby reducing complexity and bill of material (BOM) costs.

The FAN54015 charger is fully programmable via an I2C interface, allowing setup of custom charging profiles and is part of a growing family of battery charging solutions that combine safety, accuracy, and fast charging time, while reducing overall solution cost.