‘This Sort of Converter Is Now Suitable With a A lot Wider Vary of Purposes, Equivalent to TVs, Telephones, Tablets and Electrical Instruments.’
Constructing on its earlier breakthroughs introducing a brand new manner of changing electrical energy utilizing piezoelectric resonators and creating a dual-bridge piezoelectric resonator converter, CEA-Leti has paved the best way to isolating piezoelectric converters with out transformers.
The brand new topology of dual-bridge remoted piezoelectric resonator converter (DB-IPRC) gives isolation utilizing two impartial piezoelectric resonators. The improved model of the DC-DC converter considerably improves effectivity, whereas sustaining the converter isolation precept.
The outcomes had been reported in a paper, “Switching Helping Circuit Enhancing the Effectivity of DC-DC Converters Primarily based on Piezoelectric Resonators”, offered on this summer time at PCIM Europe 2024.
The paper notes that “for a 200 V to 120 V conversion, the converter reveals an effectivity of 96.2 p.c with the inductive aiding circuit, 94.3 p.c with the piezoelectric one and 87.4 p.c with none aiding circuit. The (piezoelectric resonator) aiding circuit provides a achieve in effectivity over a smaller working vary than the inductance, however results in a flatter converter.”
Constructing on 2023 Breakthroughs
The work expands on earlier outcomes reported by CEA-Leti within the August 2023 difficulty of “IEEE Transactions on Energy Electronics” within the article, “A New Remoted Topology of DC–DC Converter Primarily based on Piezoelectric Resonators”. The article says that the brand new topology “makes use of the pure isolation of piezoelectric resonators to isolate the converter’s output from the enter and vice-versa.”
The usage of piezoelectric resonators as an alternative of inductors in energy conversion “will result in a dramatic discount within the dimension of energy converters,” defined Ghislain Despesse, a co-author of the PCIM paper and the sooner article. “Our outcomes make it attainable to increase any such compact conversion to remoted converters. So any such converter is now suitable with a a lot wider vary of functions, reminiscent of TVs, telephones, tablets and electrical instruments.”
“For many individuals, piezoelectricity is related to power harvesting and the thought of low energy,” Despesse mentioned. “However in energy conversion, piezoelectrics function at excessive frequencies, higher than 100kHz, with no limits by way of enter energy. That makes it attainable to succeed in energy ranges of a number of hundred watts. The vary of functions is due to this fact very broad, with most converters having a rated energy of lower than 100W.”
