A soft-switched high frequency converter for wide voltage and power ranges

Power converters requiring wide voltage and power ranges (including power factor correction converters) are difficult to effectively implement with soft switching at high frequencies, limiting their density and/or efficiency. We propose a soft-switched converter that can operate at HF (3-30MHz) across wide input voltage and power ranges. A prototype converter experimentally achieves zero voltage switching in the MHz regime and outputs 400Vdc across input voltages of 10-400Vdc and output powers of 100-400W. This converter will permit further miniaturization of grid-interface and other converters while still maintaining high efficiency.