Post reply to: Low Voltage Boost Converter
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Low Voltage Boost Converter
Use of 2 Mhz (or greater) boost converters are growing within the automotive industry. An important road block limiting their use at higher power levels (I realize 'higher power' is a subjective description) is the boost transistor switching loss (particularly the turn-on loss). For this thread, the input voltage of interest is in the 3-12 V range. I'd like to focus on 12 V output for purposes of this discussion.
My constraints are:
--> 3-12V input
--> ~12 V output
--> 25W output typical
--> Schottky boost diode (important, as there are no reverse recovery charge to contend with, rather a anode-cathode parasitic capacitance which behaves differently in soft-switching)
--> 2 MHz fixed frequency operating frequency. I can't use variable frequency solutions.
--> Soft-switching MUST be passive in nature (keeps cost down, makes reuse of standard PWM boost ICs)
--> Wish to focus on minimizing the boost transistor turn-on loss
There are a ton of papers on passive soft-switching. Rudy Severns gave a superb seminar on the topic some years ago. The problem I have identified with all passive schemes (so far, could be that I messed up as well) is that they are intended for non-Schottky diodes or do not work at low input/output automotive voltages (voltage required to reset the soft-switching inductors/capacitors at 2 MHz is too low).
Question: I'm looking for examples and/or public domain papers which provide practical implementation ideas and guidelines for a passive fixed-frequency boost transistor snubber based on above constraints.