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1. Development of a 100 kW SiC Switched Tank Converter for Automotive Applications

   Ni, Ze ; Li, Yanchao ; Liu, Chengkun ; Wei, Mengxuan ; Cao, Dong ( September 2019 , 2019 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE))

   A 300 V to 600 V 100 kW SiC MOSFET based one-cell switched tank converter (STC) is developed as a bidirectional dc-dc power transfer stage between the vehicle battery and the DC-link side of the vehicle dc-ac inverter. A continuous half-load 50 kW and short-period full-load 100 kW operation is targeted. Working principles of the proposed topology are analyzed. Design of the key components such as SiC MOSFET power modules, AC resonant capacitor and inductor is presented. A 100 kW prototype has been assembled and tested. An energy-efficient test platform is designed. The power density of the main power processing part is around 41.7 kW/L. The tested peak and full-load efficiencies are about 98.7% and 97.35%, respectively. The thermal performance has also been evaluated. Both the tested electrical and thermal results are consistent with the theoretical design.
2. A 100kW Switched-Tank Converter for Electric Vehicle Application

   https://doi.org/10.1109/APEC.2019.8721841  

   Li, Yanchao ; Ni, Ze ; Liu, Chengkun ; Wei, Mengxuan ; Cao, Dong ( March 2019 , 2019 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC))

   This paper presents a 100kW one-cell switched-tank converter (STC) for electric vehicle (EV) application. A new evaluation method that evaluates different converter topologies has been proposed in this paper to show the advantages of the STC over the boost converter and 3-level flying capacitor multilevel (FCML) converter. Both non-interleaved (1-phase) and interleaved (2-phase and 3-phase) operation of the STC have been analyzed. The analytical study shows that it is difficult to achieve the optimum design of the passive components such as input and output capacitors in 1-phase converter because of the high RMS current flowing through them. This means the passive components need to be over-designed in order to meet the current stress requirement. For instance, the designed capacitance of input capacitor is several times of the required value, which leads to bulky capacitor size. Therefore, this paper evaluates the potentials of using 2-phase and 3-phase interleaved operation to address this issue. Two operation modes, zero-voltage switching (ZVS) mode and zero-current switching (ZCS) mode, are evaluated to show the ZCS operation mode is more suitable for the presented converter with interleaved operation. By using the interleaving concept, the predicted 100kW 3-phase interleaved converter can achieve 60% size reduction based onmore »the 1-phase converter design. And the predicted power density of the 3-phase interleaved STC can achieve 115kW/L power density. Simulation results are provided to validate the theoretical analysis. Both 1-phase and 3-phase 100kW prototypes under developing are shown in this paper.« less
3. Design and Experimental Study of a GaN-based Three-Port Multilevel Inverter

   https://doi.org/10.1109/IECON48115.2021.9589232  

   Tamasas Elrais, Mohamed ; Batarseh, Issa. ( October 2021 , IECON 2021 – 47th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society)

   A three-port multilevel inverter with two DC ports and an AC port using Flying Capacitor Multilevel (FCML) design based on Gallium Nitride (GaN) switches is proposed in this paper. Recently, FCML inverter has shown a superior ability for power conversion with high power density, improved Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), and efficiency. The presented three-port multilevel inverter fits various applications such as battery and photovoltaic (PV) grid integration and standalone AC load. The proposed inverter is experimentally verified by building a 3-kW prototype using GaN switches which include two 4-level FCML converter paths, each share the same bus capacitor (C bus ), which links them together. One FCML path is 1 kW that incorporates an unfolder for the DC-to-AC conversion and has achieved a peak efficiency of 98.2% with AC voltage and current THDs of 1.26% and 1.23%, respectively. While the second FCML converter path is 2 kW used for the DC-to-DC conversion and has achieved a 99.43% peak efficiency.
4. Highly Efficient Rectifier and DC-DC Converter Designed in 180 nm CMOS Process for Ultra-Low Frequency Energy Harvesting Applications

   https://doi.org/10.1109/DCAS51144.2020.9330671  

   Gunti, Avinash ; Biswas, Dipon K. ; Mahbub, Ifana ; Adhikari, Pashupati R. ; Reid, Russell C. ( November 2020 , 2020 IEEE 14th Dallas Circuits and Systems Conference (DCAS))

   This paper presents the integration of an AC-DC rectifier and a DC-DC boost converter circuit designed in 180 nm CMOS process for ultra-low frequency (<; 10 Hz) energy harvesting applications. The proposed rectifier is a very low voltage CMOS rectifier circuit that rectifies the low-frequency signal of 100-250 mV amplitude and 1-10 Hz frequency into DC voltage. In this work, the energy is harvested from the REWOD (reverse electrowetting-on-dielectric) generator, which is a reverse electrowetting technique that converts mechanical vibrations to electrical energy. The objective is to develop a REWOD-based self-powered motion (such as walking, running, jogging, etc.) tracking sensors that can be worn, thus harvesting energy from regular activities. To this end, the proposed circuits are designed in such a way that the output from the REWOD is rectified and regulated using a DC-DC converter which is a 5-stage cross-coupled switching circuit. Simulation results show a voltage range of 1.1 V-2.1 V, i.e., 850-1200% voltage conversion efficiency (VCE) and 30% power conversion efficiency (PCE) for low input signal in the range 100-250 mV in the low-frequency range. This performance verifies the integration of the rectifier and DC-DC boost converter which makes it highly suitable for various motion-based energy harvestingmore »applications.« less
5. Application of An Active Gate Driver for Paralleling Operation of Si IGBT and SiC MOSFET

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ECCE-Asia49820.2021.9479254  

   Wei, Yuqi ; Du, Xia ; Woldegiorgis, Dereje ; Mantooth, Alan ( May 2021 , IEEE 12th Energy Conversion Congress Exposition - Asia)

   Wide band gap (WBG) devices feature high switching frequency operation and low switching loss. They have been widely adopted in tremendous applications. Nevertheless, the manufacture cost for SiC MOSFET greater than that of the Si IGBT. To achieve a trade off between cost and efficiency, the hybrid switch, which includes the paralleling operation of Si IGBT and SiC MOSFET, is proposed. In this article, an active gate driver is used for the hybrid switch to optimize both the switching and thermal performances. The turn-on and turn-off delays between two individual switches are controlled to minimize the switching loss of traditional Si IGBT. In this way, a higher switching frequency operation can be achieved for the hybrid switch to improve the converter power density. On the other hand, the gate source voltages are adjusted to achieve an optimized thermal performance between two individual switches, which can improve the reliability of the hybrid switch. The proposed active gate driver for hybrid switch is validated with a 2 kW Boost converter.