Introduction

Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) is a very well known rechargeable battery technology, used by several electronic equipments, such as laptop computers, cell phones, cordless phones, old motherboards, etc. It is also very well known by its (in)famous memory effect, which makes this kind of battery to lose its charge faster when it is old than when it was brand new. In this article we will be explaining more in depth how NiCd batteries work, what and why the memory effect happens and how to prevent it. As the name implies, NiCd batteries are made of two chemical elements, Nickel, under the form of Nickelic Hydroxide, and Cadmium. A third element used as electrolyte, usually a solution of Potassium Hydroxide (KOH). The Cadmium is the big villain. First, it is the element behind the memory effect, and second it is a heavy metal and thus very toxic. Thats why newer rechargeable battery technologies do not use Cadmium anymore (e.g. Nickel-Metal Hydride [NiMH], Lithium-Ion [Li-ion] and Lithium-Ion Polymer [Li-Pol]). Laptop computers, cell phones, cordless phones and motherboards found today on the market dont use NiCd batteries anymore and you wont have any kind of problem or memory effect if your electronic gadget uses a different battery technology from NiCd. Just to make sure, if you take a look on your battery you will find a sticker showing which battery technology it uses. If it isnt NiCd, you wont have the memory effect problem. What is this memory effect anyway? Memory effect is when your battery thinks that it is fully charged but it isnt. So lets say that is 70% charged but it thinks that it is 100% charged. Under this condition, when installed on its charger it will stop recharging, because it is thinking that it is already full. When you start using your gadget, it will last shorter, since it is only 70% charged and thus the assumption that older NiCd batteries last less than brand new ones. Which is true, but that are ways of preventing the memory effect to occur.

Why Does Memory Effect Occur and How To Prevent It?

Technically speaking, it occurs by the formation of Cadmium crystals inside the battery. These crystals are hard to dissolve and the ones responsible for the memory effect. So the trick to avoid the memory effect is to avoid the formation of those crystals inside the battery. This is typically accomplished by recharging the battery only when it is discharged and not when it is partially discharged. Also, high temperatures help the crystals to be formed. However this brings another problem: NiCd cannot be fully discharged or they will be damaged. Fully discharged usually means having a voltage below 1 V per cell (NiCd batteries are usually formed by grouping several

1.2 V cells; typical NiCd batteries are 3.6 V packs using three 1.2 V cells). So the trick that is recommended by many people to solve memory effect by fully discharging NiCd batteries by shorting them (or any other sort of quick discharge) does in fact more damage than good to the batteries, even though several people claim that they can recover NiCd batteries with memory effect by doing this. The bottom line is: this kind of trick wont dissolve the Cadmium crystals, which are responsible for the memory effect problem. The correct way to discharge NiCd batteries and prevent memory effect is to discharge them by using them normally on your gadget until your gadget complains that the batteries are low. Another thing some people claim is to recover NiCd batteries by zapping them, i.e. performing a high-current quick charge on them. We will talk about this on the next page. Monitoring current NiCd charge status is very hard, because NiCd batteries dont present a linear discharge ramp. The voltage found on a NiCd cell stays at 1.2 V until the battery is discharged. So even if the battery has only 30% of its charge, it will keep providing 1.2 V on its output, for example. Lets explain this better. Regular non-rechargeable 1.5 V present a linear discharge ramp, so when it has 50% of its charge, it will provide only 0.75 V on its output. So you can easily monitor the current charge status of a regular battery, it is just a matter of metering it with a voltmeter. So when a NiCd is partially charged, when cant tell if it is really partially charged or fully charged, because on both scenarios the battery will provide 1.2 V on its output. NiCd batteries are discharged whenever they present a 1 V voltage on its output. The problem, like we said before, is that if you keep using the battery below this point, you will damage it. Thats exactly when your cordless phone starts beeping telling you that its battery is discharged, for example. Time to recharge it right away. So the correct way to recharge a NiCd battery is to fully charge it, use it and wait for it to achieve its 1 V level per cell, and only then recharge it. This is also known as a full recharge cycle. NiCd batteries can only go thru 500 full recharge cycles. After that the battery starts presenting problems. Like we mentioned, usually electronic gadgets will let you know when the battery achieve this state: is the exact point when you gadget starts complaining that its battery is low. Some old laptop computers using NiCd battery packs used a trick to let the user know how much battery was remaining. The manufacturer knew how much time the computer would last with the battery fully charged. So on

the minute you disconnected tyour laptop from the wall, it started measuring the time it was running on batteries and made a calculation on how much battery was left. So it didnt really measure the battery status (because, like we said, it is almost impossible to know NiCd charge status) but instead showed a guess. Another big problem with NiCd batteries is that they lose charge when not is use, at a 1% per day rate. This means that a NiCd battery that is not is use will lose its charge at a 30% per month rate. In three and a half months it is totally gone, what can permanently damage it like we said, NiCd batteries cannot be fully discharged.