Your portable design may be low power, but your battery is not low maintenance. Choosing the right charging algorithms and circuits goes a long way toward prolonging battery life. Rechargeable batteries are widely used in portable electronic devices. It is important for portable device design engineers to select the right battery chemistry for each application, as well as the right charging solution for the chemistry they choose. There are four mainstream rechargeable battery chemistries on the market: NiCd, NiMH, Li-Ion, and Li-Polymer. The NiCd battery was the first mass-market rechargeable battery designed to replace the similarly-sized yet nonrechargeable alkaline battery. The commercial success of the NiCd battery established the advantages of rechargeable over nonrechargeable batteries for most portable equipment and devices. This success also laid the market foundation for the more advanced rechargeable battery technologies to come-NiMH, Li-Ion, and Li-Polymer batteries. The NiMH battery was received by the market as a higher-energy-density - and therefore longer-run-time - replacement of the NiCd battery (NiMH and NiCd batteries have the same operating and terminating voltages, as well as similar form factors; see Table 1).
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