Lithium batteries now form an integral part of modern-day living and can be seen in multiple applications such as power tools, vacuum cleaners, mobile devices, and electric bicycles. Holtek, with its extensive development involvement in lithium battery management products for many years, has accumulated a rich array of research and development experience. Holtek will continue to build upon this experience and fully intends to extend its charger series of MCUs as well as its lithium battery management AFE/MCUs series to meet the lithium battery charger application needs for a wide range of diverse market areas.
Charger MCUs
The Holtek charger MCU series, the HT45R/F5Q, incorporates a number of technology advantages to meet the basic specification needs of chargers but also offers additional functions to improve charger safety and functionality. The MCUs have a predictive protection mechanism that can detect the battery status before charging commences to provide additional safety. In addition, the charging management process supports a customized charging curve design that can adapt to the needs of different batteries. For production efficiency optimization, Holtek MCUs include up to two fully integrated 14-bit DACs, which can implement both precise voltage and current control. By using the "Charger Volume Production Fixture" platform, the calibration time can be reduced from 60 seconds to 10 seconds. This time reduction will provide significant improvements in production efficiency and also reduce production line manpower. These MCUs also provide support for battery identification and online updating of the program library using a CAN Bus, ensuring that the charger used can adapt to newly shipped batteries which will extend battery life and compatibility.
Lithium battery management AFE/MCU
Holtek's range of lithium battery management devices is divided into AFEs and BMS MCUs. These have a complete array of lithium battery safety protection mechanisms that can adapt to different design requirements. The battery detection and protection functions are able to precisely monitor and control over-voltage and under-voltage conditions and have an additional function to detect when the battery pack is disconnected. There is also a fully integrated power component protection function to detect and protect from short-circuit situations which can set the response time in accordance with the product needs to ensure battery pack stability. The battery balancing function will reduce any voltage difference to extend battery life and its ultra-low power consumption mode can reduce the standby current to only 0.1µA, thus providing extended standby times.
The Holtek lithium battery management devices can support up to eight battery strings, but during 2025 the company expects to also release further devices that will support 10, 13, 16, and 24 strings. These new devices will meet the lithium battery pack management requirements for products in high-voltage and large-capacity applications. To provide assistance to designers in order to reduce their development time, Holtek provides a "Charger Development Workshop" and a "Lithium Battery Management Development Workshop". With an easy-to-use graphical interface, chargers and lithium battery management products can be rapidly developed removing the need for writing code. More details are available on the Holtek official website or if preferred contact Holtek's sales representatives and agents.
