A DC/DC Converter Based on a Very High Frequency Tuned Power Oscillator

Inhalt:
Increasing the switching frequency up to the VHF range (30MHz-300MHz) in switch mode power supplies allows for smaller passive components and higher power densities. However, in the VHF range, gate driver chips often struggle with providing the adequate transistor switching signal. There is therefore a need for VHF inverter topologies that do not make use of gate driver chips: tuned power oscillators. Those tuned power oscillators can be the first building block of a DC/DC converter. We present here a 30V to 100V DC/DC converter based on a tuned power oscillator working at very high frequency (40MHz). The converter is made of three stages: a self-oscillating class 2 inverter, an impedance matching network and a class DE rectifier. Each stage is designed, simulated and a PCB prototype using a GS61004B from GaN Systems is built and tested in order to show the matching between the experimental results and the simulation outcome.