A New Family of Zero-Current-Switching (ZCS) PWM Converters

A new family of zero-current-switching (ZCS) pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) converters which uses a new ZCS-PWM switch cell is presented in this paper. The main switch and auxiliary switch operate at ZCS turn-on and turn-off, and all the passive semiconductor devices in the ZCS-PWM converter operate at zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) turn-on and turn-off. Besides operating at constant frequency and with reduced commutation losses, these new converters have no additional current stress in comparison to the hard-switching converter counterpart. The new family of ZCS-PWM converters is suitable for high-power applications using insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). The PWM switch model and state-space averaging approach is used to estimate and examine the steady-state and dynamic character of the system. The principle of operation, theoretical analysis, and experimental results of the new ZCS-PWM boost converter, rated 1 kW and operating at 30 kHz, are provided in this paper to verify the performance of this new family of converters.