MAS6011 monitors the supply voltage and charging of a battery-powered system containing a small solar cell. The current consumption of this IC is extremely low, 110 nA, which means the system can charge from very low light conditions and also stay in power down mode for years and still operate directly from the battery before recharging.
To be able to charge a battery also in conditions with very limited light, a large solar cell is usually used. This can on the other hand easily destroy the battery due to over voltage during strong sun light. MAS6011 solves this dilemma and will give secure protection of a secondary 3V battery over a big range of light strengths (lx).
The switching levels have been designed for usage with VL-type rechargeable lithium vanadium batteries. Those batteries are compact, button-shaped, secondary batteries with very high energy compared to more traditional batteries. The self discharge rate is less than 2% a year which makes them very useful as a power source in systems that might be stored for a long time without re-charging.