To meet the demand for a streamlined power management solution for energy harvesting hardware, E-Peas has released a new family of battery charger devices. While the company's existing PMIC provides direct power delivery for applications, as well as charging energy storage components such as lithium-ion batteries or supercapacitors, the AEM10900, AEM10300, and AEM30300 are fully dedicated to charging functionality. This allows them to be used in cases where simpler implementations are required, where space or cost constraints must be considered. PMIC can get zero static current from the battery -- this shows that if energy harvesting is stopped for an extended period of time, the energy stored in the battery will not be wasted on PMIC.
Working with single-cell PHOTOVOLTAIC panels, the highly integrated AEM10900 PMIC boost converter is optimized for solar-based energy collection implementation. With ultra-fast power point tracking designed for objects in motion, the device is guaranteed to get the most energy from ambient lighting -- and thus store as much as possible. In addition, it has a 250mV cold start capability, which shows that it can start charging the battery even with low light intensity. It introduces an I2C interface to reduce the number of pins and provide a greater number of possible configurations. It offers a range of features, including battery thermal protection, joule counters that let the user know how much energy is collected, and transportation modes where the battery may not be charged. The key applications of the PMIC are wearable consumer products and wearable medical monitoring devices.
Both the AEM10300 and AEM30300 PMIC have built-in ultra-low power DC-DC converters for continuous operation in the 100mV to 4.5V input voltage range. Adaptive energy management allows these devices to switch automatically between boost, buck, and buck operational configurations. This ensures that the optimal energy transfer is constantly maintained between the respective input and storage units.
"As the E-Peas business matures and we continue to gain greater commercial appeal, we must look to offer a wider portfolio of PMIC options to the market," said Chief executive and co-founder Geoffroy Gosset. "After intensive consultations with our customers, it became clear to us that only a compact solution with a fee was truly valuable. With these newly launched devices, we are now better positioned to serve the wearables, healthcare, consumer and industrial sectors, supporting them with technology that fully meets their needs in terms of performance, size and price."
