New Industry Products

ON Semiconductor Intros First 15W Qi WPC Compliant Wireless Charging

May 21, 2018 by Paul Shepard

ON Semiconductor has released the NCP6401, the first 15 watt (W) Qi WPC compliant wireless charging device. It is designed for use with smart phones, tablets and other portable devices.

The NCP6401 is a wireless charging receiver compliant with Qi and AirFuel standards. Its flexible design supports proprietary Magnetic Inductance (MI) and Magnetic Resonance (MR) wireless charging systems as well. It delivers up to 15W of power and is the highest integrated solution in the market with an ARM M0+ cortex, 128 Kbits flash, synchronous rectifier and an LDO with pass through function.

It features a programmable output voltage from 4V to 12V in 100mV steps and delivers a maximum output current of 1.25A. The NCP6401 is packaged in a 3.355mm x 3.875mm CSP72 with 0.4mm pitch.

"I am excited to announce the NCP6401, the 1st 15 W receiver with embedded ARM M0+ Cortex along with a 128 Kbits Multi-time Programmability Flash in the market. The NCP6401 supports Magnetic Inductance, Qi and AirFuel standards, and it can support Magnetic Resonance with an external buck converter," comments Majid Kafi, General Manager for System Power Solutions at ON Semiconductor, in this video:

The following is the transcript from the video: "The 128Kbits Multi-time Programmability flash allows the phone OEMs to make changes over the air, and get much better programmability and design flexibility. This added flexibility also helps OEMs deal with challenging supply chain management issues.

"The NCP6401 is optimized to get 87% end to end efficiency at 15W. The lab measurement data was taken using the generic Nok-9 TX to insure interoperability with the large number of TX's in the market.

"The same solution can be optimized for wearable devices that typically use less than 5W of power. The NCP6401 is able to meet the fast transient response that is required by phone OEMs and has great thermal performance at the die level.

"The coil temperature is minimized by operating at low current (about 1.25A) and higher voltage (12V) at its output. We have data at 5W, 10W, and 15W, with an average die temperature of <50°C and coil temperature of <42°C. The NCP6401 supports fast charging protocols, and the ASIC is capable of receiving 15 Watts of power at a Max current of 1.25A. Although, most phone OEMs would like to see receivers that can support 15W, the maximum power that can meet the phone's thermal spec is not higher than 7.5W.

"The NCP6401 is the highest integrated solution in the market with an ARM M0+ cortex, 128Kbits flash, synchronous rectifier and an LDO with pass through function. We are able to conduct in house pre-certification that goes through a complete interoperability and FOD (Foreign Object Detection) tests before customers pursue independent lab certifications, thus bringing their confidence up when using our product.

"In addition, to the NCP6401 15W receiver we just discussed, ON Semiconductor recently announced a 15w transmitter that is automotive qualified and Qi certified. This reference design uses quad power coils, and quad patented FOD (Foreign Object Detection) coils that allows us to actually detect between friendly metal and unfriendly metal.

"NCP6500, the 15w transmitter that we are showing in this demo, works with any Qi certified receiver in the market.

"This is our NCP6401 evaluation board. It has our NCP6401 ASIC in this white line, with the external capacitors that are used to optimize the performance of the evaluation board. All the external circuit you outside this white area is not needed on an actual phone, and it is for interfacing through GUI for a laptop. We are using an off the market tx to show the power transfer between our receiver and the transmitter. The coil used here is the standard LIDS coil. Obviously to optimize our efficiency we are using the best coil in the market, however this part, when it is in a phone, it will use a PCB base coil.

"Our skilled FAE's and system level application engineers will be available locally to help customers with their system level design, magnetic design and certifications."