• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.191-199
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• 2016

Conventional two-level Zeta converters have drawbacks, such as high voltage stresses and high current ripples. To address these problems, a three-level Zeta converter that uses a couple inductor is proposed in this study. The proposed converter utilizes the three-level power switching circuit to reduce the voltage stresses and inductor current ripples. Compared with the conventional converter, the proposed converter can improve power efficiency and power density. A 500 W prototype circuit is used to verify the operation and performance of the proposed converter via experimental results.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.23-30
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• 2014

This paper proposes a single power-conversion ac-dc converter with a dc-link capacitor-less and high power factor. The proposed converter is derived by integrating a full-bridge diode rectifier and a series-resonant active-clamp dc-dc converter. To obtain a high power factor without a power factor correction circuit, this paper proposes a suitable control algorithm for the proposed converter. The proposed converter provides single power-conversion by using the proposed control algorithm for both power factor correction and output control. Also, the active-clamp circuit clamps the surge voltage of switches and recycles the energy stored in the leakage inductance of the transformer. Moreover, it provides zero-voltage turn-on switching of the switches. Also, a series-resonant circuit of the output-voltage doubler removes the reverse-recovery problem of the output diodes. The proposed converter provides maximum power factor of 0.995 and maximum efficiency of 95.1% at the full-load. The operation principle of the converter is analyzed and verified. Experimental results for a 400W ac-dc converter at a constant switching frequency of 50kHz are obtained to show the performance of the proposed converter.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.48-56
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• 2012

This paper deals with power electronic converter education program using LabVIEW. LabVIEW is a graphic based programming language with easy debugging, which is suitable for education program that can be used to study and figure out the operation of power electronic converters. When LabVIEW is employed as a simulation program of the operation of power electronic converters, the resulting program has the advantage such that the effects of the change of control variables and circuit parameters on the various variables such as the output voltage and the inductor current etc can be directly displayed without any separate compiling procedure. This paper shows the design procedure and the characteristics of the power electronics education program implemented by LabVIEW focusing on DC-DC converter among power electronic converters.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.549-556
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• 2014

This paper proposes a highly power-efficient single-inductor multiple-outputs (SIMO) DC-DC converter with a gate charge sharing method in which gate charges of output switches are shared to improve the power efficiency and to reduce the switching power loss. The proposed converter was fabricated by using a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process technology with high voltage devices of 5 V. The input voltage range of the converter is from 2.8 V to 4.2 V, which is based on a single cell lithium-ion battery, and the output voltages are 1.0 V, 1.2 V, 1.8 V, 2.5 V, and 3.3 V. Using the proposed gate charge sharing method, the maximum power efficiency is measured to be 87.2% at the total output current of 450 mA. The measured power efficiency improved by 2.1% compared with that of the SIMO DC-DC converter without the proposed gate charge sharing method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2015

In this paper, a buck-boost type battery charger is developed for charging battery set with a lower voltage. This battery charger is configured by a rectifier circuit, an integrated boost/buck power converter and a switched capacitors circuit. A boost power converter and a buck power converter sharing a common power electronic switch are integrated to form the integrated boost/buck power converter. By controlling the common power electronic switch, the battery charger performs a hybrid constant-current/constant-voltage charging method and gets a high input power factor. Accordingly, both the power circuit and the control circuit of the developed battery charger are simplified. The switched capacitors circuit is applied to be the output of the boost converter and the input of the buck converter. The switched capacitors circuit can change its voltage according to the utility voltage so as to reduce the step-up voltage gain of the boost converter when the utility voltage is small. Hence, the power efficiency of a buck-boost type battery charger can be improved. Moreover, the step-down voltage gain of the buck power converter is reduced to increase the controllable range of the duty ratio for the common power electronic switch. A prototype is developed and tested to verify the performance of the proposed battery charger.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1224-1232
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• 2014

A full-bridge secondary dual-resonant DC-DC converter using the asymmetrical pulse-width modulated (APWM) strategy is proposed in this paper. The proposed converter achieves zero-voltage switching for the power switches and zero-current switching for the rectifier diodes in the whole load range without the help of any auxiliary circuit. Given the use of the APWM strategy, a circulating current that exists in a traditional phase-shift full-bridge converter is eliminated. The voltage stress of secondary rectifier diodes in the proposed converter is also clamped to the output voltage. Thus, the existing voltage oscillation of diodes in traditional PSFB converters is eliminated. This paper presents the circuit configuration of the proposed converter and analyzes its operating principle. Experimental results of a 1 kW 385 V/48 V prototype are presented to verify the analysis results of the proposed converter.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.161-165
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• 2011

In this paper, a high-efficiency DC-AC converter is used for wireless energy transmission. The DC-AC convertter is implemented by combining the oscillator and power amplifier. Given that the conversion efficiency of a DC-AC converter is strongly affected by the efficiency of the power amplifier, a high-efficiency power amplifier is implemented using a class-E amplifier structure. Also, because of the low output power of the oscillator connected to the input stage of the power amplifier, a high-gain two-stage power amplifier using a drive amplifier is used to realize a high-output power DC-AC converter. The high-efficiency DC-AC converter is realized by connecting the oscillator to the input stage of the high-gain high-efficiency two-stage class-E power amplifier. The output power and the conversion efficiency of the DC-AC converter are 40.83 dBm and 87.32 %, respectively, at an operation frequency of 13.56 MHz.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.861-871
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• 2016

With high penetration of renewable energies, power electronic transformers (PETs) will be one of the most important infrastructures in the future power delivery and management system. In this study, an isolated bidirectional modular multilevel DC/DC converter is proposed for PET applications. A modular multilevel structure is adopted as switching valves to sustain medium voltages to achieve modular design and high reliability. Only one high-frequency transformer is used in the proposed converter, which significantly simplifies the circuit and galvanic insulation design. A dual-phase-shift modulation strategy is proposed to regulate the output power and achieve a simple voltage balancing control. A down-scaled (2 kW/20 kHz) prototype is constructed to demonstrate the proposed converter and verify the control strategy. The experimental results comply with the theoretical analysis well, with the highest power efficiency reaching 97.6%.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.1400-1408
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• 2013

This paper proposes a new grid-tied power converter for battery energy storage, which is composed of a 2-stage DC-DC converter and a PWM inverter. The 2-stage DC-DC converter is composed of an LLC resonant converter connected in cascade with a 2-quadrant hybrid-switching chopper. The LLC resonant converter operates in constant duty ratio, while the 2-quadrant hybrid-switching chopper operates in variable duty ratio for voltage regulation. The operation of proposed system was verified through computer simulations. Based on computer simulations, a hardware prototype was built and tested to confirm the technical feasibility of proposed system. The proposed system could have relatively higher efficiency and smaller size than the existing system.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.12
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• pp.1992-1999
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• 2016

The plasma process is applied to various industrial fields such as high-tech IT industry, textiles and medical. Therefore, there is increasing interest in the plasma power supply, and demand for power devices of high efficiency and high power density is increased. Plasma power supply for process must solve the arc problem, when the plasma is unstable. The output capacitor is closely related to the arc problem. If the output capacitor is smaller, the damage from the arc problem is reduced. However, the small value of the output capacitor affects the operating characteristics of the power supply. In this paper, a LLC resonant converter is adopted, because it can achieve high efficiency and power density in the plasma DC power supply. However, due to the small value of the output capacitor, the converter is operated as a LLCC resonant converter. Therefore, a gain characteristic of LLCC resonant converter is analyzed by using the FHA (First Harmonic Approximation) in plasma power supply. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the characteristic analysis of LLCC Resonant Converter.