New Industry Products

Intersil Intros ISL6292 Lithium Battery Charger IC

July 29, 2003 by Jeff Shepard

Intersil Corp. (Milpitas, CA) introduced what is claimed to be the industry’s smallest and most advanced lithium-ion/lithium-polymer battery charger IC, the AnyAdapter™ ISL6292. Designed for a wide range of hand-held device applications, the next-generation charger IC saves valuable space in its near-chip-scale 3mm x 3mm, dual flat no-lead (DFN) package while offering high thermal efficiency along with full voltage protection, current protection and Intersil’s Thermaguard™ temperature-controlled charge-rate protection.

The ISL6292 AnyAdapter charger IC accepts a wide range of voltage sources, including voltage and current-limited, wall-plug modules and USB bus power. The advanced IC operates as a linear charger when the ac adapter is a voltage source by charging the cell in a constant-current then constant-voltage profile. The constant voltage is either 4.1V (ISL6292-1CRX) or 4.2V (ISL6292-2CRX) with 1% accuracy. Charge current is resistor-programmable up to a maximum of 2A with 10% accuracy.

The ISL6292 also works with a current-limited adapter to minimize thermal dissipation, in which case, the IC operates as a linear charger, but offers the thermal efficiency typically found only with pulse or switching chargers. Intersil’s AnyAdapter technology enables up to an astounding 750% less thermal generation than competing solutions, thus allowing a significant reduction in charge time for similar operating conditions. A choice of packages includes the thermally enhanced 3mm x 3mm DFN, the 4mm x 4mm QFN and 5mm x 5mm QFN. All are priced at $0.95 each in 1,000-unit quantities.