STMicroelectronics Announces Enhanced Version of Industry-Proven Battery-Management IC

­STMicroelectronics’ L9963F automotive battery-management IC includes all the features needed to manage lithium battery packs in hybrid (HE) and full electric (FE) vehicles, as well as industrial energy storage systems, and 48V/96V applications.

The L9963F brings under-the-skin improvements to the industry-proven L9963E as a fully compatible replacement that requires no hardware or software changes for existing users of the L9963 series.

One device can monitor from 4 to 14 stacked cells, thereby addressing applications up to 48V. Connecting multiple ICs permits even larger arrays of up to 31 battery packs with a total of 434 series cells.

Coulomb counting inside the L9963F supports pack overcurrent detection in both ignition on and off states. A fully redundant cell-measurement path, with ADC swap, provides enhanced safety and enables limp-home functionality.

The L9963F can take its power from the monitored battery and integrates circuitry to generate stable internal references and ensure measurement precision, including a voltage regulator and bootstrap. Support for cell-balancing current up to 200mA helps safeguard battery health, and the L9963F can keep the integrated balancing-MOSFET drivers active for a timed period after entering low-power operation. This silent-balancing mode maintains protection while taking the least possible energy from the battery.

With nine general-purpose I/O pins (GPIOs) and an SPI interface for control and monitoring, the device also features a comprehensive set of fault-detection and notification functions. The L9963F is featured for ISO 26262 compliance and is ASIL-D ready for use in functional-safety applications.

With fully synchronized current and voltage sampling, with 0µs desynchronization delay between samples, the L9963F integrates a 16-bit voltage ADC with ±2mV maximum error in the 0.5V to 4.3V range. This high synchronization accuracy extends across multiple stacked ICs, leveraging the 2.66Mbps isolated serial communication interface to ensure maximum 4µs latency between the first and 31st device in the chain.

The L9963F is in production now, in a 10mm x 10mm TQFP64 package. Budgetary pricing starts at $4.60 for orders of 1000 pieces.