UC San Diego

This dissertation explored the ideas and concepts for hybrid switched capacitor converter topologies and new power delivery architectures to provide viable solutions for high conversion ratio DC-DC and AC-DC applications.

A new Multi Inductor Hybrid (MIH) Converter family for high conversion ratio DC-DC applications has been synthesized and analyzed to provide non-isolated DC-DC conversions with large voltage conversion ratios efficiently. The highlight of this converter family is a 6-level 6-phase 6-inductor MPMIH converter, which achieved 90.7% peak efficiency with a load range of 0-220A at 1V and 1kA/in^3 density.

A new modeling method reveals that all odd-level Flying Capacitor Multi-Level converters become current sources with non-ideal timing while the even-level converters stay as voltage sources. A method for identifying unbalanced hybrid converters is also provided.

This dissertation demonstrates a two-stage power delivery architecture to bridge AC distribution voltages to core levels for computing loads in data centers. In combination, direct conversion from \textasciitilde110 VAC to 1VDC achieves a peak efficiency of 84.1% while providing output currents up to 160A.

Partial power processing for AC/DC applications has been explored with a switched-capacitor (SC) based hybrid step-down converter and its new control techniques. The operation with multiple modules is verified with a 115VAC-to-48VDC conversion and 200VAC input to two 48VDC outputs.

A new modular isolated DC-DC converter is proposed and demonstrated for point-pf-load (POL) applications with partial power processing. A prototype of the modular architecture has been demonstrated for a 100V-to-3V point-of-load conversion with a maximum load of 60A. The peak efficiency of 91% is achieved at 57W/20A output.

A new multi-inductor multi-output hybrid converter is also proposed and demonstrated. The MiMoH converter prototype has been implemented to demonstrate conversion from a 24-48V input voltage to three individually regulated outputs ranging from 1.2V to 2.2V. The converter prototype achieves 40W peak power and 91.8% peak efficiency.

The topologies presented in this dissertation, corroborated with control and modeling techniques, demonstrated superior performance, natural balancing ability, and relatively easy controllability, making them excellent candidates for more compact and efficient system design.