Zero Inductor-Voltage Multilevel Bus Converter

A novel topology to achieve 4:1 voltage step down, aimed at 48 V to 12 V conversion in data center applications, is presented. The so-called dc-transformer topologies have become a very active area of research to improve the overall efficiency of data centers in response to a shift from a 12 Vdc bus...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on power electronics 2021-10, Vol.36 (10), p.11565-11578
Main Authors: Samuel, Webb, Liu, Tianshu, Liu, Yan-Fei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
48 V to 12 V
bus converter
Capacitors
Charging
Converters
data center
Data centers
dc-transformer (DCX)
dc–dc converter
Density measurement
Efficiency
Energy conversion efficiency
high efficiency
Inductors
intermediate bus
Low voltage
Power system measurements
Switches
Topology
Very Low Frequencies
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Summary:A novel topology to achieve 4:1 voltage step down, aimed at 48 V to 12 V conversion in data center applications, is presented. The so-called dc-transformer topologies have become a very active area of research to improve the overall efficiency of data centers in response to a shift from a 12 Vdc bus architecture to a 48 Vdc bus architecture. In particular, switched-capacitor topologies have been investigated due to their high power density, efficiency, and low reliance on magnetics. However, switched-capacitor topologies have challenges associated with the hard-charging of capacitors and are often forced to make design compromises that reduce their overall performance. The proposed topology maintains many of the advantages of a switched capacitor topology, such as reduced component stresses, and very low reliance on magnetics, while also inherently avoiding any hard-charging of the flying capacitors. This allows the converter to operate at a very low frequency, such as 60 kHz, with a small inductor, such as 100 nH, and use low voltage stress devices to achieve a peak efficiency of more than 99% for 48 V to 12 V conversion and a power density of 800 W/in 3 .
ISSN:0885-8993
1941-0107
DOI:10.1109/TPEL.2021.3072542