IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 51, NO.

1, FEBRUARY 2004

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An Improved ZCT-PWM DCDC Converter for High-Power and Frequency Applications

Hac Bodur, Member, IEEE, and A. Faruk Bakan

AbstractIn this paper, an improved active resonant snubber cell that overcomes most of the drawbacks of the normal zero-current transition (ZCT) pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) dcdc converter is proposed. This snubber cell is especially suitable for an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) PWM converter at high power and frequency levels. The converter with the proposed snubber cell can operate successfully with soft switching under light-load conditions and at considerably high frequencies. The operation principles, a detailed steady-state analysis, and a snubber design procedure of a ZCT-PWM buck converter implemented with the proposed snubber cell are presented. Theoretical analysis is verified with a prototype of a 5-kW and 50-kHz IGBT-PWM buck converter. Additionally, at 90% output power, the overall efficiency of the proposed soft switching converter increases to about 98% from the value of 91% in the hard-switching case. Index TermsActive snubber cells, soft switching, zero-current switching (ZCS), zero-current transition (ZCT), zero-voltage switching (ZVS), zero-voltage transition (ZVT).

Fig. 1. Improved ZCT-PWM buck converter with IGBT.

I. INTRODUCTION O achieve high power density and fast transient response in well-known pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) dcdc converters, switching frequency can be increased by decreasing switching losses through circuits called snubber cells [1][14]. In the literature, there are many types of proposed snubber cells, such as RC/RCD, polarized/nonpolarized, resonant/nonresonant, and active/passive snubbers [1]. In recent years, a number of zero-voltage transition (ZVT) and zero-current transition (ZCT) PWM converters have been proposed by adding resonant active snubbers to conventional PWM converters to combine the desirable features of both resonant and normal PWM techniques [3][5], [7]. In the normal ZCT-PWM converter [3], the main switch is perfectly turned off under zero-current switching (ZCS) and zero-voltage switching (ZVS) provided by ZCT with a serial resonance. The auxiliary switch is turned on with near ZCS. The operation of the circuit is very lightly dependent on line and load conditions. On the other hand, the main switch is turned on and the main diode is turned off simultaneously with hard switching, so that a short circuit occurs at the same time. The prevention of this short circuit causing losses and electromagnetic interference (EMI) noise of large magnitudes is very diffi-

cult to realize. Also, the auxiliary switch is turned off with hard switching, and the parasitic capacitors discharge through their own switches [3], [5]. The insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) has been broadly used as a switching device in high-power industrial applications nowadays. The IGBT has high switching power, low conduction loss, and low cost, but relatively high switching losses. The turn-off switching loss of the IGBT dominates its switching losses [2], [3]. In this study, an improved active snubber cell that is especially suitable for an IGBT-PWM converter at high power and frequency levels is proposed. This snubber cell overcomes most of the drawbacks of the normal ZCT-PWM converter. The converter with the proposed snubber cell can operate successfully with soft switching under light-load conditions and at considerably high frequencies. The operation principles, a detailed steady-state analysis, and a snubber design procedure of a ZCT-PWM buck converter implemented with the proposed snubber cell are presented. Also, theoretical analysis is verified with a prototype of a 5-kW and 50-kHz IGBT-PWM buck converter. II. OPERATION PRINCIPLES AND ANALYSIS A. Definitions and Assumptions The circuit scheme of the improved ZCT-PWM buck converter is shown in Fig. 1. The proposed snubber cell consists of a resonant inductor , a resonant capacitor and only one and the auxiliary auxiliary switch . Both the main switch consist of an IGBT and its body diode. The auxiliary switch switch has lower power rating than the main switch. To simplify the steady-state analysis of the circuit given in Fig. 1 during one switching cycle, it is assumed that input and output voltages and output current are constant, and semiconductor devices and resonant circuits are ideal.

Manuscript received December 18, 2001; revised June 11, 2003. Abstract published on the Internet November 26, 2003. The authors are with the Electrical Engineering Department, Electrical and Electronics Engineering Faculty, Yildiz Technical University, 34349 Istanbul, Turkey (e-mail: bodur@yildiz.edu.tr). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2003.822091

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Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit schemes of the operation stages in the proposed converter.

B. Operation Stages Seven stages occur within one switching cycle in the steadystate operation of the proposed converter. The equivalent circuit schemes of these operation stages are given in Fig. 2(a)(g), respectively. Key waveforms concerning the operation stages are shown in Fig. 3. : Fig. 2(a)]: At the beginning of this Stage 1 [ is in the off state. The main diode stage, the main transistor is in the on state and conducts the load current . At this moment, the equations , and , and are valid. , a turn-on signal is applied to the gate of and a At current begins to flow through it. The rise rate of this current is current limited by . During this stage, current rises and falls simultaneously and linearly. Thus, the equations (1) can be written. At , current reaches and falls to zero, and this stage finishes. The time interval stage,

(2) current of this

(3) is found. Therefore, the load current is commutated from to with soft switching. is turned on under near ZCS and is turned off with ZVS due to . through : Fig. 2(b)]: At , a resonance Stage 2 [ between and starts via the path under constant current . is . Here, the diode is Also, the initial current of turned on under near ZCS through . For this resonance, (4)

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: Fig. 2(c)]: This stage is the on state of Stage 3 [ the known PWM converter. For this stage, (11) can be written. Stage 4 [ : Fig. 2(d)]: At , a control signal is applied to the gate of the auxiliary transistor . It is turned on with near ZCS due to . A reverse resonance between and begins by the path under constant at the same time. For this resonance, the equations (12) (13) (14) are obtained. At the time , as current reaches and current drops to zero, this stage is finished. In this state, (15) is formed. Stage 5 [ : Fig. 2(e)]: Immediately after the , the diode is turned on with near ZCS and the time resonance that started before continues to resonate through and . Thus, the diode conducts the excess of the resonant current from the load current . For this case, the equations, (16) (17)
Fig. 3. Key waveforms concerning the operation stages in the proposed converter.

(18) are derived. At , current falls again to and current is turned off under becomes zero, and this stage finishes. near ZCS because of . The duration of this interval, (19) is obtained. The duration of this stage is also equal to the ZCT of the converter. Just now, it should be noted that the time must be removed during this stage, in which gate signal of is in the on state, and so the main transistor the body diode is turned off perfectly under ZCS and ZVS provided by ZCT. : Fig. 2(f)]: During this stage, the Stage 6 [ is charged from to with constant current capacitor . At , the voltage across reaches and the load current is commutated from to with soft switching, and the turn on of and this stage is finished. The turn off of take place naturally under ZVS. For this stage, the equations (20) (21) (22) are obtained. Also, after the time be removed. , the gate signal of must

(5) (6) (7) are obtained. In these equations, (8) (9) are valid. Here, is the angular frequency of the resonance and is the peak value of the resonant current. During this stage, drops voltage rises. Thus, as long as the voltage across is turned off under ZVS. the main diode , the resonant current becomes zero and this stage At is finished. current drops again to and current falls to voltage becomes at the same time. The diode zero and is turned off under near ZCS because of . At the end of voltage is reversed. The time this stage, the polarity of the interval of this stage, (10) occurs. Here, the time duration . the half resonance cycle of this stage is also equal to

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Stage 7 [ : Fig. 2(g)]: This stage is the off state of the known PWM converter. For this stage, (23) , one switching can be written. Therefore, at the moment cycle is completed and another switching cycle begins. III. DESIGN PROCEDURE A detailed analysis is not done for the minimization of the additional losses in this paper. The following design procedure considering [5] is mainly based on the soft switching turn off requirements of the main switch with the maximum load current. are selected 1) Resonant inductor and resonant capacitor to allow the peak value of the resonant current to be approximately twice the maximum load current. According to the (7) and (9), (24) 2) can be found. and are selected to allow one half resonant cycle to be approximately twice the fall time of the main transistor. In connection with (10), (25) can be written. In the above equations, is the maxis the fall time of the main imum load current and transistor. and are selected with reference Consequently, if to (24) and (25), the ZCT time given in (19) becomes about 33% longer than the fall time of the main transistor. Thus, the soft-switching turn-off of the main transistor is realized with ZCT. Also, the additional losses stay at about minimum level with reference to [5]. 3) With reference to Fig. 3, the sum of the transient intervals, and the minimum and maximum time durations of the turn on signal of the main transistor can be defined, respectively, as follows: (26) (27) (28) 4) If the sum of the transient periods is permitted to be equal to at most 20% of the switching cycle as given in [13], for possible maximum switching frequency by using (26) (29) is found. In this state, for the minimum and maximum values of the duty ratio of the converter by using (27) and (28) (30) (31) are obtained. As an example, if the design is done with regard to (24) and (25), and a main transistor owning a fall
Fig. 4. Experimental circuit of a 5-kW and 50-kHz IGBT-PWM buck converter.

becomes equal time of 500 ns is used in the circuit, to 100 kHz. Also, the sum of the transient periods is very small, and is not dependent on line voltage and load current. Thus, the proposed converter can operate succesfully with soft switching under light load conditions and at considerably high frequencies. These features make this converter very interesting. IV. CONVERTER FEATURES The features of this new converter can be summarized as follows. 1) All of the semiconductor devices operate with soft is perfectly turned off with ZCT, and switching. is turned on and off is turned on with near ZCS. is naturally turned off under ZVS, and is under ZVS. and are turned turned on with near ZCS. Also, on and off with near soft switching. 2) The circulating energy is minimal. Because one half resonance takes place during both the turn on and off processes of . 3) The control is very easy. For the control of the converter, it is enough to perform a delay between a normal PWM signal and its inverse. This delay is about a quarter resonant cycle. 4) The converter is as simple and cheap as the normal ZCT-PWM converter [3]. However, it overcomes most of the drawbacks of the normal ZCT converter. 5) The converter acts as a conventional PWM converter during most of the time, because during both the turn on and off processes only one half resonance occurs and the resonant cycle is very short. 6) The converter can operate at wide line and load ranges. Because the turn on and turn off transients are provided by one half resonance and this resonant cycle is not dependent on the load current. 7) The presented converter does not require any additional passive snubbers. 8) The proposed active snubber cell can be easily applied to the other basic PWM dcdc converters and to all switching converters. 9) Resonances with high frequency take place between the resonant inductor and the parasitic capacitors after turn-off processes. Moreover, the main diode is unfortunately subjected to twice the input voltage.

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Fig. 5. Experimental results. (a), (b) Oscillograms of the main switch and the main diode in the hard switching converter respectively, with 200 V/div, 20 A/div, and 2 s/div scales. (c)(e) Oscillograms of the main switch and the main diode and the auxiliary switch in the proposed soft switching converter respectively, with 200 V/div, 20 A/div, and 2 s/div scales. (f) Efficiency curves of the hard-switching and the proposed soft-switching converters comparatively.

10) The presented converter has more advantages than most of the other improved ZCT converters. As an example, [5] as one of well-known improved ZCT-PWM converters proposed in this area has the following drawbacks, three half resonances in different

sizes take place during both the turn on and turn off processes, the circulating energy and the additional losses are higher, control is harder, resonant capacitor is subjected to about twice output voltage, and there is an additional diode.

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V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS A prototype of a 5-kW and 50-kHz IGBT-PWM buck converter given in Fig. 4 has been realized to verify the predicted operation principles and analysis of the improved ZCT-PWM buck converter. With reference to the handbooks of the manufacturers, some are V, nominal values of the main switch A, ns, ns and ns. The values of V, A, ns, the auxiliary switch are ns, and ns. Also, owns V, A, and ns. It should be noted that the IGBTs used in the hard- and the soft-switching converters do not have good dynamic characteristics. Also, the experimental results should be commented by considering this state. The converter with these IGBTs operates at 5 kW and 50 kHz without any problems in aid of the proposed snubber cell. The experimental oscillograms shown in Fig. 5(a)(e) are obtained from operating hard- and soft-switching converters with a digital camera. The experimental efficiency curves given in Fig. 5(f) are determined by measuring the voltage and current values of the input and output of these converters. In addition, the measurements in the circuit operated at low frequency levels are used to estimate the experimental results in the hard-switching converter. In Fig. 5(a) and (b), it can be seen that the main transistor and main diode are switched with hard switching. While is in the turn-on process and is in the turn-off process simultaneously, a very high short-circuit current flows through them. still continues to conduct the load current during its turn-off process. The resonances with parasitic capacitors take place after turn on and off processes at very high frequency levels. Therefore, very high switching losses dominating the total loss occur in the hard-switching converter. is turned From Fig. 5(c)(e) together, it can be seen that on under near ZCS, and is perfectly turned off with ZCS and is turned on and off under ZVS, ZVS provided by ZCT. and is subjected to about twice input voltage during its off state. is turned on with near ZCS, and is naturally Additionally, turned off under ZVS. Also, the body diodes and operate with near soft switching in the proposed converter. The reverseis shown as an overshoot and the one recovery current of is shown as a collapse on the current. Unfortunately, of the additional resonances with high frequency occur between the resonant inductor and the parasitic capacitors after turn-off and . These resonances reflect on all voltage processes of and current oscillograms. Consequently, during the turn-on processes of and , and the turn off processes of and , a little overlap takes place between their own voltages and currents. Therefore, the switching losses are near zero, but some additional conduction loss occurs, and so the conduction losses dominate the total loss in the soft-switching converter. In Fig. 5(f), it can be seen that since the snubber cell is designed for the maximum load current, the efficiency of the improved converter is very high especially at high output power levels. At a 90% output power, the overall efficiency of the pro-

posed converter increases to about 98% from the value of 91% in the hard-switching one. Furthermore, if an IGBT faster than one here is used in the experimental converters, the differences between the hard and the soft switching efficiency values decrease naturally. However, it is not very important. As a result, it can be clearly seen that the predicted operation principles and theoretical analysis of the proposed converter are verified with all of the experimental results. All of the semiconductor devices are turned on and off with soft switching, and most of the drawbacks of the normal ZCT converter are overcome perfectly and easily in the proposed converter. VI. CONCLUSION In this paper, an improved active resonant snubber cell that overcomes most of the drawbacks of the normal ZCT-PWM dcdc converter is proposed. It is particularly suitable for an IGBT-PWM converter at high power and high frequency levels. Also, the proposed snubber cell has a simple structure, low cost, and ease of control. The converter with the proposed snubber cell can operate successfully with soft switching under light-load conditions and at considerably high frequencies. A PWM buck converter with the proposed snubber cell has been analyzed in detail. The predicted operation principles and theoretical analysis of this converter have been exactly verified with a prototype of a 5-kW and 50-kHz IGBT-PWM buck converter. It has been clearly observed that all of the semiconductor devices have operated with soft switching, and the converter has operated at a wide load range without any problems. Also, the overall efficiency has relatively increased with regard to that in the hard-switching case. REFERENCES
[1] A. Ferraro, An overview of low-loss snubber technology for transistor converters, in Proc. IEEE PESC82, 1982, pp. 466477. [2] G. Hua, C. S. Leu, Y. Jiang, and F. C. Y. Lee, Novel zero-voltagetransition PWM converters, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 9, pp. 213219, Mar. 1994. [3] G. Hua, E. X. Yang, Y. Jiang, and F. C. Lee, Novel zero-current-transition PWM converters, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 9, pp. 601606, Nov. 1994. [4] A. Elasser and D. A. Torrey, Soft switching active snubbers for DC/DC converters, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 11, pp. 710722, Sept. 1996. [5] H. Mao, F. C. Y. Lee, X. Zhou, H. Dai, M. Cosan, and D. Boroyevich, Improved zero-current-transition converters for high-power applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 33, pp. 12201232, Sept./Oct. 1997. [6] C. J. Tseng and C. L. Chen, A passive snubber cell for nonisolated PWM DC/DC converters, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 45, pp. 593601, Aug. 1998. [7] , Novel ZVT-PWM converters with active snubbers, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 13, pp. 861869, Sept. 1998. [8] V. Grigore and J. Kyyra, A new zero-voltage-transition PWM buck converter, in Proc. 9th Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conf., MELECON98, vol. 2, 1998, pp. 12411245. [9] P. J. M. Menegaz, M. A. Co, D. S. L. Simonetti, and J. L. F. Vieira, Improving the operation of ZVT DC-DC converters, in Proc. IEEE PESC99, vol. 1, 1999, pp. 293297. [10] K. M. Smith and K. M. Smedley, Properties and synthesis of passive lossless soft-switching PWM converters, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 14, pp. 890899, Sept. 1999. [11] H. Bodur, M. H. Sarul, and A. F. Bakan, A passive lossless snubber cell design for an ohmic loaded PWM IGBT chopper fed by a diode bridge from AC mains, in Proc. Int. Conf. Electrical and Electronic Eng., ELECO99, Bursa, Turkey, Dec. 15, 1999, pp. 440444.

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[12] T. W. Kim, H. S. Kim, and H. W. Ahn, An improved ZVT PWM boot converter, in Proc. IEEE PESC00, vol. 2, 2000, pp. 615619. [13] C. M. de O. Stein and H. L. Hey, A true ZCZVT commutation cell for PWM converters, IEEE Trans. Power Elecron., vol. 15, pp. 185193, Jan. 2000. [14] H. Bodur and A. F. Bakan, A new ZVT-PWM DC-DC converter, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 17, pp. 4047, Jan. 2002.

Hac Bodur (M00) was born in Ordu, Turkey, in 1959. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1981, 1983 and 1990, respectively. He was a Research Assistant from 1982 to 1986, a Lecturer from 1986 to 1991, an Assistant Professor from 1991 to 1995, and an Associate Professor from 1995 to 2002 in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, where, since 2002, he has been a Professor. His research has been concentrated on the areas of ac motor drives, power-factor correction, switching power supplies, high-frequency power conversion, and active and passive snubber cells in power electronics. He has authored over 25 journal and conference papers in the area of power electronics. He was also a Researcher on two research projects concerning power electronics.

A. Faruk Bakan was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1972. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1994, 1997, and 2002, respectively. He was a Research Assistant from 1995 to 2003 in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, where, since March 2003, he has been an Assistant Professor. His research subjects include ac motor drives, direct torque control, powerfactor correction, and active and passive snubber cells in power electronics. He has authored over ten journal and conference papers in the area of power electronics. He was also a Researcher on a research project concerning power electronics.