Part Number: BQ24075
Hi,
We are using BQ24075 charger and BQ27426 fuel gauge. The first pass design had problems and we could not get the charger to work so we are redesigning and have few questions.
1. Should the thermal pad for BQ24075 (on which we put 5 ground vias to connect to the ground plane below - ground is 2nd plane in the board) be also connected directly to the charger's ground pin (pin 8) at the top level? In other words should we short the thermal pad (with the vias present on thermal pad) directly with the charger's ground pin with a trace at the top level? We have seen reference designs at TI's site where a trace was used to short with the thermal pad and charger's Vss pin and also layouts where the scheme was not followed at all but grounds were only shorted through the plane only.
2. Should the charger's ground pin (8) be directly connected to the the batter pack's -ve terminal with a wide trace at the top level or connected through the ground plane will be good enough?
3. Should gauge vss pin/bump ( center bump of the 9 balls BGA package) be connected to the battery's -ve terminal and charger's ground pin (pin 8) with a metal trace or they all could be connected through the ground plane? For gauge's BGA package (a cell phone part) there is no additional space at the top level to escape a ground trace, so the connection can only be through the ground plane, would that be a problem?
4. Should the decoupling cap's Vss terminal for the charger and battery pack's -ve terminal and fuel gauge's Vss bump be all connected though the ground plane or they all need to be shorted at the top level with trace? There is a space crunch to short all the Vss pin, bump and capacitor's terminal with a trace at the top level, will there be any problem if all the ground terminals are shorted only through the plane below which they usually are in any design?
It will be very helpful to know which ground terminals must be shorted at the top level for the charger and gauge with a trace in addition to the connection through the plane.
Thank you much for helping.
- Andy