A switching-based Li-ion battery charger without any additional compensation circuit is proposed. The proposed charger adopts a dual-current sensor and a current window control to ensure system stability in different charge modes: trickle current, constant current, and constant voltage. The proposed Li-ion battery charger has less chip area and a simpler structure to design than a conventional Li-ion battery charger with pulse width modulation. Simulation with a 1000µF capacitor as the battery equivalent, a 5V input, and a 1A charge current resulted in a charging time of 1.47ms and a 91% power efficiency.

We report the fabrication of magnetic metallic contaminant detectors using multiple high-Tc SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) for a lithium-ion battery cathode sheet. Finding ultra-small metallic foreign matter is an important issue for a manufacturer because metallic contaminants carry the risk of an internal short. When contamination occurs, the manufacturer of the product suffers a great loss from recalling the tainted product. Hence, a detection method of small contaminants is required. Preventing such accidents is also an important issue for manufacturers of industrial products. Given the lower detection limit for practical X-ray usage is in the order of 1 mm, a detection system using a SQUID is a more powerful tool for sensitive inspections. We design and set up an eight-channel roll-to-roll high-Tc dc-SQUID inspection system for a lithium ion battery cathode sheet. We report the evaluation results that the detection of a small $arphi $18,-$mu $m steel particle on a lithium-ion battery cathode sheet was successfully done.

The power system and the battery management of mobile phones used by NTT DoCoMo subscribers will be described. The energy requirements of the phones' AC-adaptors (chargers), their power-management systems, and trends in energy consumption will be focused on. The results of the new Li-ion batteries' safety tests, quick tests assessing battery capacity deterioration, and battery lifetime predictions will be also discussed.

We have developed a quick battery checker the Li-ion battery packs used in mobile phones. It checks for capacity deterioration by using an impedance-measuring method. Our previous measurements of the capacity and impedance at 1 kHz for various battery packs proved conclusively that there is a strong correlation between degraded capacity and impedance. The battery checker's design took into account the results we obtained from measuring impedances. We showed that the battery checker is highly accurate and fast.

A lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery protection IC with an average current of 0.99 µA (at a battery voltage of 3.6 V) and a standby current (after detecting over-discharge) less than 0.01 µA is presented. This low power performance is achieved via a power-on duty-cycle technique. The protection circuit samples the voltage of the battery periodically and powers down during the rest of time. This Li-ion battery protector provides over-charge, over-discharge, excess-current and short circuits protection. This protection IC was implemented in a 0.6-µm CMOS technology and the active area is 880 µm 780 µm.