MAX17710 Charger and recommended battery

[Goature]

Hello all!

I'm having fun with the MAX17710 Energy-Harvesting Charger and Protector. The IC is designed to charge a 4.1V rechargeable cell, and the datasheet specifies the Thinergy MEC200-series as a suggested battery. I have not been able to find this battery for sale, at any of the common distributors. Do you have any suggestions to what replacement I can use?

Ps. The datasheet specifies that the cell has to be a "low-capacity cell", but that doesn't tell me much. Im therefore not sure, if a single cell LiPo will be too large. The Thinergy Batteries are <3mAh.

Tinergy MEC201:
4.1V
1mAh
350uA discharge
30mA Max discharge
1"x1"x0.01"

[Goature]

For anyone interessted, I managed to find the following:
EFL700A39 from STMicroelectronics (0.7mAh)
PGEB201212 from PowerStream (10mAh)
CBC050-M8C from Cymbet (5uAh)

[amyk]

According to the datasheet, this charger charges at 625nA, or 0.625uA. That is a tiny amount of current. At that rate, even a 5uAh cell will take 8 hours to charge. I doubt a larger cell would even charge, because its self-discharge will far exceed that. For comparison, the protection circuitry of a regular lion cell continually draws a few uA, which is several times more than the charge current this IC can put out.

To give a perspective on the order of magnitude, a typical 18650 of ~2000mAh capacity would theoretically, ignoring leakage and other losses, take over 365 years to charge at that current.

[Goature]

According to the datasheet, this charger charges at 625nA, or 0.625uA.

It might be me that is misunderstanding, but the value you are referring to is the quiescent current (I_qchg) of the charger when active. Some might call this value the "leakage current". The charger actually has a typical charging current rated to 100mA (CHG Maximum Input Current). Limited by other maximum ratings of course.

Can anyone confirm this?

[sleemanj]

Can anyone confirm this?

I concur,

CHG Continuous Current
 (limited by power dissipation of package) ...................100mA


CHG Quiescent Current IQCHG VCHG = 4.0V rising, VBATT = 4.0V 625 1300 nA