Cell balancing is a critical featur

Cell balancing is a critical feature for the run time of the device and the health of its cells as imbalancedcells are prone to overheating which can cause cell degradation. The bq769x0 family has integrated cellbalancing FETs, which make it simple to implement cell balancing. This also lowers the number ofexternal components required for balancing, which reduces the BOM cost and board area. When onlyusing the internal FETs for cell balancing, the cell-balancing current is limited due to the size of theinternal FETs and it might require more cycles to complete balancing in order not to exceed the packagetemperature rating. Low-pass filters are still required for the input of the cell pins that meet therequirements in section 6.3 of the datasheet. While boot switch is not shown, it is still necessary andSLUA769 goes over more detail on boot switch alternatives. Figure 2, Figure 3, and Figure 4 areexamples of 5S, 6S, and 7S configurations using only the internal cell balancing.