Renesas Batteries are Everywhere
October 2012 – At the Renesas Devcon in Anaheim, CA this year, we had a briefing on the analog and power management products from Tad Keeley and Tsutomu Aoki. These discussions prefaced the many sessions on batteries and power management at the event.
Based on the expertise in power devices including IGBTs, SiC and GaN processes – they have been able to create full battery and power management control chips. These include the fully programmable MCU with optimized base functions, in combination with traditional signal conditioning analog and power devices. These functions are being used in mobile devices and laptops (primarily for Lithium Ion Battery control) and server/ultrabook products under the Vr12 standards for up to 300W. These lower power modules are also used for sensor control an interface. A session at the event did an overview on battery selection detailing tradeoffs not only in battery chemistry (NiMHd, NiCd, Li, Alkaline, etc) but also the size and construction of the cells. These issues matter when it comes to replacement cycle, recharge time, battery active vs standby power, cost, thermal performance and most importantly form factor.
Renesas Analog and Power Offering 2012
To supplement the existing technology for changing, they also introduced thier NFC based wireless charging solution. Currently implemented as a two chip single package solution , the inductive charging platform uses a single 13.56MHz antenna for the NFC communication and the wireless charging. The product is being designed for further integration to eliminate some of the external passive components that are currently required. The transfer method is limited to 4-5W on the transmit side as to avoid thermal issues on the receive side.
The charging and power circuits, still using the MCU control as the core, also supports higher voltage and current applications. These include smart home, appliance and industrial applications as well as EV/HEV applications. Since the MCUs are already approved for automotive applications, the use of the cores for the EV and HEV power control application was a natural. The design technologies support iso-couplers to separate low voltage and high voltage domains on the chips or in the same package.
The high voltage and high power devices have both standard packages and form factor specific packages to insure long term operation. This is particular importance in LED and appliances which have to fit existing form factors for new electronics. The status on these processes is that the Super Junction (SJ) Mosfet and standard IGBT/FRD are available in 2012 along iwth JFET products.. The SiC devices are targeted for mass production in 2013 and the GaN devices will be in mass production in 2014. The IGBT products support up to 1200V applications while the SJ-Mosfet, SiC and GaN devices are aimed at the 600V marketplace.
