Rapid Charging for Battery-Powered Portable Devices

Michelle Li and Jinrong Qian
Texas Instruments

Mobile devices are becoming an integrated part of our daily life. Let’s use the smartphone as an example. Instead of a simple phone call function, smartphones are now packed with rich features for social networking, web browsing, messaging, gaming, large HD screens and many others. All these features are pushing the phone to become a power-hungry device. Battery capacity and energy density have been increased substantially to meet the higher power requirements. Read more about Rapid Charging for Battery-Powered Portable Devices

Energy Harvesting: Is There No Free Lunch?

Upal Sengupta, Staff Applications Engineer
Texas Instruments, Battery Management Solutions

We’ve all heard the familiar saying “there’s no free lunch.”  It seems to apply to so many situations in life as well as in circuit design.  But still, we all like the idea of getting something for nothing.  The concept of “Energy Harvesting” has been getting some attention lately because of newly available technologies that allow us to take advantage of free energy sources like sunlight, ambient heat, or the vibration from traffic on a roadway.  So do we finally get our free lunch? Read more about Energy Harvesting: Is There No Free Lunch?