Qorvo® PAC family offers industry's first 20-cell smart battery management single-chip solution

Qorvo® PAC family offers industry's first 20-cell smart battery management single-chip solution

GREENSBORO, NC – March 7, 2023 – Qorvo®, a global leader in connectivity and power solutions, announces the addition of the PAC22140 and PAC25140 to its growing family of Power Application Controllers (PACs), the industry’s first single-chip solutions to support battery packs consisting of up to 20 cells in series (20s). These products leverage PAC’s intelligent motor control technology to expand into the fast-growing intelligent battery management solution (BMS) market for multi-cell applications such as garden tools, e-bikes, carts, generators, energy storage systems, and other industrial products.

With the help of Qorvo's complete hardware and firmware ecosystem, the Qorvo PAC22140 and PAC25140 are highly integrated, saving designers more than 50% PCB space, reducing total BOM cost by 30%, and shortening time to market. These devices integrate all necessary analog and power management peripherals with a 32-bit Arm® Cortex® M0 or M4F microcontroller, and have cell balancing, monitoring and protection functions for 10s-20s battery packs.

The PAC22140 and PAC25140 provide access to multiple analog and digital peripherals required to manage today's multi-cell battery stacks, including programmable gain differential amplifiers, multiple 16-bit Σ-Δ ADCs for current and voltage sensing, and a 10-bit SAR ADC. A single-supply 145V DC/DC buck controller generates a 5V system rail to power the device, while an integrated charge pump charges and discharges the FET drivers.

“As consumers look to extend battery life, reduce charging times and reduce the overall weight of battery-powered devices, demand for higher cell count solutions is only going to increase,” said Brian McCarthy, senior manager of Qorvo’s PAC product line. “Taken together, all of the integrated peripherals and power management features of the PAC22140 and PAC25140 make them the most highly integrated solutions for 20s battery management applications.”

The PAC22140 and PAC25140 offer low power sleep modes (less than 3µA) while enabling long storage times with push button wake-up, timer, or charger detection. An integrated high voltage buck converter powers the system from a 5V regulated supply with a maximum current of 225mA, reducing thermal issues. An integrated 3.3V LDO provides up to 90mA for running other peripherals. An analog MUX is connected to the SAR ADC for safety checks on internal nodes.

The PAC22140 is available in a 9x9 mm 60-pin QFN package and is in production now; the PAC25140 is available in a 10x10 mm 68-pin QFN package and is sampling now, with production to begin in April 2023. Qorvo also offers the PAC22140EVK1 and PAC25140EVK1 hardware development kits to help users develop smart BMS solutions using a fully integrated Arm Cortex-M microcontroller and BMS-specific analog front end (AFE). To obtain pre-production samples of the PAC25140 and PAC25140EVK1, please contact a Qorvo sales representative.

For more information on Qorvo's advanced solutions for power applications, visit the Smart Battery Solutions and Smart Motor Controllers dedicated pages.