Smart BMS supports 20-cell battery packs

Qorvo, Inc. has expanded its power management portfolio with the introduction of  the PAC22140 and PAC25140 power application controller (PAC) devices. Claiming the industry’s first single-chip solutions to support battery packs with up to 20 cells in series (20s), these products enable intelligent battery management solutions (BMS) for industrial, e-mobility and battery backup applications.

(Source Qorvo, Inc.)

These highly integrated 10s-20s smart BMS chips with an integrated microcontroller (MCU) and cell balancing save more than 50% of PCB space, while lowering the total bill-of-materials cost by 30%, according to Qorvo. The devices integrate all essential analog and power management peripherals with a 32-bit Arm Cortex M0 or M4F MCU and include cell balancing, monitoring and protection for 10s-20s battery packs.

The PAC22140 and PAC25140 provide multiple analog and digital peripherals to manage high-cell-count battery packs. These include a programmable-gain differential amplifier, multiple 16-bit Sigma-Delta ADCs for current and voltage sensing and a 10-bit SAR ADC.

Qorvo said a single-supply 145 V-buck DC/DC controller generates a 5-V system rail to power the device, and an integrated charge pump supports the charge and discharge FET drivers. The 3.3-V LDO supplies up to 90 mA for running additional peripherals.

The PAC22140 features a 50-MHz Cortex M0 with a 10-bit SAR ADC, 32 kB Flash and 8 kB SRAM, while the PAC25140 packs a 150-MHz Arm Cortex M4F with a 12-bit SAR ADC, 128 kB Flash and 32 kB SRAM. They both support multiple communication protocols including UART, SPI, I2C/SMBus and CAN (PAC25140) as well as several GPIOs.

“The need for higher cell count solutions is increasing as end users demand longer battery life, faster charging time and lighter overall weight from new battery-powered applications,” said Brian McCarthy, senior manager for Qorvo’s PAC product line, in a statement.

Both devices provide a low power hibernate mode of less than 3 µA, which delivers a long storage time with wakeup from push button, timer or charger detection.  They also feature an analog MUX connected to the SAR ADC for safety checks on internal nodes.

The PAC22140, in volume production, is available in a 9 × 9-mm, 60-pin QFN package, and the PAC25140, sampling with production scheduled in April 2023, is available in a 10 ×10 mm, 68-pin QFN package. Development kits – the PAC22140EVK1 and PAC25140EVK1 – also are available. Qorvo will showcase the new products at Embedded World 2023, March 14-16, Nuremberg, Germany in booth 4-578.