A component-reduced Zero-Voltage Switching three-level DC-DC converter

The basic Zero-Voltage Switching (ZVS) three-level DC-DC converter has one clamping capacitor to realize the ZVS of the switches, and two clamping diodes to clamp the voltage of the clamping capacitor. In order to reduce the reverse recovery loss of the diode as well as its cost, this paper proposes to remove one of the clamping diodes in basic ZVS three-level DC-DC converter. With less components, the proposed converter can still have a stable clamping capacitor voltage, which is clamped at half of the dc link voltage. Moreover, the ZVS performance will be influenced by removing the clamping diode. But as long as the clamping capacitor is properly selected, the degradation of the ZVS performance can be neglected. The impact of the clamping capacitor on the ZVS performance is mathematically analyzed as well.