Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
There is high demand for power converters with ultra-low voltage conversion ratio for high-performance computing and automotive applications. Recently, numerous hybrid power converter topologies have been proposed. However, most of them face significant performance or control challenges. To find the optimized solution of power delivery, this paper presents a monolithic CLC hybrid power converter. Power loss is minimized in three aspects:lowering voltage stress of switches;reducing inductor DC resistance loss; and soft charging of capacitors. It is compared with three popular commercial products, 3-level, 2C-3level and DSD converters. The CLC converter switches at 1MHz and achieves a peak efficiency of 94.2% for 48V-1.8V conversion, and 90.5% for the 48V-1V conversion and power density of 4.4W/mm2, representing X3 times power density improvement and 10% efficiency improvement over a traditional buck converter.
