Nickel-zinc: Recharging battery performance and OEM design opportunities

Nickel-Zinc is showing potential to become the new cost effective, safe battery solution for high-power motor-driven and portable electronics devices. Nickel-Zinc, with a high average operating voltage (1.6 V), is presenting new design options. A two-cell NiZn battery solution is now compatible with the new generation of 3 V semiconductor circuits. This presents designers with an opportunity to eliminate low drop out (LDO) regulators, since there is no longer the need to drop as much battery voltage when using Nickel-Zinc battery solutions. Since Nickel-Zinc is packaged in cylindrical cells and offers retail availability, it also allows OEMs to design customer-accessed battery compartments. These batteries improve bill of materials (BOM) cost, eliminate battery safety circuits, meters, chargers, reduce charging heat and allow the consumer to again be responsible for replacement batteries, thus improving device warranty economics.