Electric power

Traveling wave piezoelectric transformer for multi-level insulated gate-driver power supply

Published on - PCIM Europe 2019; International Exhibition and Conference for Power Electronics, Intelligent Motion, Renewable Energy and Energy Management

Authors: Thomas Martinez, Denis Labrousse, Gaël Pillonnet, Dejan Vasic, François Costa

The traveling-wave piezoelectric transformer (TWPT) is a new topology of piezoelectric transformer providing a multi-phases system of voltages at its output. The inherent galvanic insulation of piezoelectric transformers makes them particularly suitable for insulated gate-drive power supply applications. In this paper, we use the TWPT with several phases to generate the different insulated voltage rails required for the driving of a multi-level inverter leg. The insulated gate driver power supply including the TWPT is presented and experiments are performed to drive the power MOSFETs of a half-bridge. The TWPT and the circuit associated generates a bipolar voltage level +15 V/-15 V up to 500 kHz switching frequency.