“Double Lithium-Ion/Lithium-Polymer USB Type-C Charger
Nowadays, Lithium batteries are used extensively in portable devices, such as cellphones, laptop computers, electronic gadgets, … etc. There is a standard industry-defined procedure (cycle) for charging the lithium-ion/lithium-polymer batteries, otherwise, the lifetime of the batteries is reduced significantly or even they might explode and catch fire. As a basic rule of thumb, a lithium battery should be charged at the rate of 0.5C to 1C. In this article/video, I have introduced a universal double lithium battery charger that the charging current (C rate) can be adjusted simply by changing a resistor value. You just need a 5V power source (such as a mobile charger) and a USB Type-C cable.
To design the schematic and PC, I used Altium Designer 22 and the SamacSys component libraries (Altium Plugin). To get high-quality PCB boards, I sent the Gerbers to PCBWay and purchased original components using componentsearchengine.com. To examine the charging current/voltage, I used the Siglent SDM3045X multimeter. Isn’t cool?!, So let’s get started!
According to the MCP73831 datasheet: “The MCP73831/2 devices are highly advanced linear charge management controllers for use in space limited, cost-sensitive applications. The MCP73831/2 are available in an 8-Lead, 2 mm x 3 mm DFN package or a 5-Lead, SOT-23 package. Along with their small physical size, the low number of external components required make the MCP73831/2 ideally suited for portable applications. For applications charging from a USB port, the MCP73831/2 adheres to all the specifications governing the USB power bus. The MCP73831/2 employs a constant-current/constant-voltage charge algorithm with selectable preconditioning and charge termination. The constant voltage regulation is fixed with four available options: 4.20V, 4.35V, 4.40V, or 4.50V, to accommodate new, emerging battery charging requirements. The constant current value is set with one external resistor. The MCP73831/2 devices limit the charge current based on die temperature during high power or high ambient conditions. This thermal regulation optimizes the charge cycle time while maintaining device reliability.”
The charging current of the chip can be programmed from 15mA to 500mA which covers the majority of applications. MCP73831 has one main difference with MCP73832 which is the charge status pin. I decided to select MCP73831 for this project. Figure 2 shows the charging cycle of the chip which is a complete charging cycle.”