A 2kV charge-based ZVS three-level inverter

Industrial applications, e.g., semiconductor manufacturing equipment, require power converters providing high power with high precision and bandwidth. This article presents a three-level flying capacitor resonant pole inverter configuration that combines high output power and high switching frequency with reduced switch voltage stress. A multilevel modulation strategy is applied to minimize conduction losses, which, in addition, guarantees zero-voltage switching (ZVS) for the entire operating range to reduce switching losses. The proposed multilevel converter configuration is compared with an existing two-level configuration by simulation. Increasing the number of voltage levels results in lower total losses and increased linearity of the generated output current. Experimental results acquired with a hardware prototype validate the fast switching of high voltage, proper functioning of the multilevel modulation strategy, and achieving of ZVS. Improvements of the theoretical analysis are presented to compensate for delays in the system and deviating parameter values. Results obtained with a compensated system indicate a relatively high accuracy and linearity of the generated output current of the inverter.