Intersil Corporation introduces two new USB-C™ buck-boost battery chargers that support bidirectional power delivery in ultrabooks, tablets, power banks and other mobile products. The single-chip ISL9238 and ISL9238A battery chargers replace competitive two-chip solutions to reduce customer bill of materials (BOM) costs by up to 40%. Both ICs employ Intersil’s patented R3™ modulation technology to extend battery life and deliver acoustic noise-free operation, superior light-load efficiency and ultra-fast transient response.
The ISL9238 and ISL9238A operate in forward buck, boost or buck-boost mode to fast charge mobile battery packs with up to 4-cell Li-ion batteries. They also support USB 3.1 On-The-Go (OTG) with 5V/20V reverse buck, boost or buck-boost mode to deliver power out of a USB-C port for charging external devices such as smartphones, headphones or virtual reality goggles. At maximum power, both ICs provide 20V at 5A to the USB-C port for delivery of power up to 100W over a reversible USB Type-C connector cable. The ISL9238A features the same capabilities as the ISL9238, but also includes a different SMBus address for OEMs that want to use both ICs to design systems with dual USB-C ports.
In charging mode, the ISL9238 and ISL9238A take input power from a wide range of DC power sources, including AC/DC charger adapters, USB power delivery (PD) ports and any travel adapter. Both chargers include SMBus and I2C programmable features such as depleted battery trickle charging, and a two-level adapter current limit for turbo-mode events where the charger takes advantage of the adapter’s milliseconds of surge current capability to minimize power draw and extend battery run-time. The ISL9238 and ISL9238A also feature programmable autonomous charging and an end of charge safety timer to stop battery charging.
The ISL9238 and ISL9238A are pin-compatible with the ISL9237 USB-C battery charger and join Intersil’s family of mobile computing power management solutions, including the ISL95852 Vcore PMIC, ISL95908 peripheral PMIC, and discrete PWM controllers (ISL95853/54/55/57). These ICs power IMVP8-compliant mobile systems using 6th and 7th Gen Intel® Core™ processors.
Key Features and Specifications of ISL9238 and ISL9238A
- Buck-boost NVDC charger for 1-, 2-, 3-, or 4-cell Li-ion batteries
- Input voltage range of 3.2V to 23.4V (no dead-zone)
- System output voltage of 2.4V to 18.304V
- Up to 1MHz operation allows use of smaller, lower cost inductors and automatically reduces switching frequency with no audible acoustic noise when charger is in DCM mode
- ASGATE FET control: actively controls inrush current to prevent FET damage
- Low-power and high-power LDO outputs tie to VDD pin to provide bias power and MOSFET gate drive power
- Compliant with Intel PROCHOT# and PSYS for protection against battery voltage drop, adapter over-current, battery over-current and overheat
- Allows trickle charging of depleted battery
- Autonomous charging option provides end of charge control using safety timer to stop battery charging
- SMBus/I2C programmable limit settings with adapter current monitor (AMON) and battery discharging current monitor (BMON)
- Battery learn mode calibrates the battery fuel gauge
- ISL9238A includes a different SMBus address to support charging a second battery
For more information, please visit http://www.intersil.com/products/isl9238.
