For a variety of reasons, it is desirable to charge batteriesas rapidly as possible. At the same time, overchargingmust be limited to prolong battery life. Such limitation ofovercharging depends on factors such as the choice ofcharge termination technique and the use of multi-rate/multi-stage charging schemes. The majority of batterycharger ICs available today lock the user into one fixedcharging regimen, with at best a limited number ofcustomization options to suit a variety of application needsor battery types. The LTC?1325 addresses these shortcomingsby providing the user with all the functionalblocks needed to implement a simple but highly flexiblebattery charger (see Figure 1) which not only addressesthe issue of charging batteries but also those of batteryconditioning and capacity monitoring.