An ultra-compact and efficient Li-ion battery charger circuit for biomedical applications

This paper describes an ultra-compact analog lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery charger for wirelessly powered implantable medical devices. The charger presented here takes advantage of the tanh output current profile of an operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) to smoothly transition between constant current (CC) and constant voltage (CV) charging regimes without the need for additional area- and power-consuming control circuitry. The proposed design eliminates the need for sense resistors in either the charging path or control loop by utilizing a current comparator to detect end-of-charge. The power management chip was fabricated in an AMI 0.5 μm CMOS process, consuming 0.15 mm² of area. This figure represents an order of magnitude reduction in area from previous designs. An initial proof-of-concept design achieved 75% power efficiency and charging voltage accuracy of 99.8% relative to the target 4.2 V.