A Switching-Capacitor PWM DC-DC Converter and Its Variations

This paper proposes a novel switching-capacitor pulsewidth modulation (PWM) converter. The converter is a combination of a switching-capacitor converter and a PWM converter, and it has the following advantages: 1) zero-voltage switching of all the MOSFETs; 2) with an autotransformer self-driven method, there is no need to adjust the synchronous rectifier control timing, and this reduces body diode conduction loss; 3) its efficiency is not sensitive to the leakage inductor, so a discrete transformer can be used, and it is suitable for both voltage regulator module (VRM) and voltage regulator down (VRD) application; and 4) a single-phase option makes it more flexible, and it can achieve higher efficiency in the whole load range with a phase-shedding control strategy. A 700-kHz 1.2-V/35-A POL prototype and a four-phase 700-kHz 1.2-V/130-A-output VRM prototype were built to verify the analysis.