A 12V-to-1V switched-capacitor-assisted hybrid converter with dual-path charge conduction and zero-voltage switching

Abstract

This paper proposes a direct 12V-to-1V hybrid converter using a switched-capacitor-assisted (SCA) topology, featuring dual-path output current conduction to lower the inductor current. In contrast to the existing dual-path structures, the proposed topology realizes a high step-down conversion with efficiency improvement in heavy-load conditions. Besides, the converter further achieves an efficiency boost in light-load conditions using zero-voltage switching. Designed in a 180-nm SOI BCD process, the proposed converter regulates an output of 0.7~1.3V from a 12-V input with a peak efficiency of 92%. Under a loading current of 2A, it attains an efficiency over 84% at the 1-V output. Compared with the conventional buck, it achieves an improvement of 9.8% in peak efficiency and 13.6% in maximum-loading efficiency.

Design and Implementation of Hybrid DC-DC Converter: A Review

“…In contrast, Type-III and Type-IV exhibit low VCR, with Type-III being suitable for high-voltage and Type-IV for low-voltage applications, respectively. However, the mitigation of high DCR due to a smaller on-chip inductor, as emphasized in [30], [31], [32] have proposed a modified DPSD, reducing the inductor current across a wide range conversion ratio. In short, DPSD topology enables a smaller size of on-chip inductor but suffers from switching loss due to hard switching, and the significance of DCR loss has to be considered.…”