A Flying Capacitor Multilevel Flyback Converter for Pulsed Power Applications

This paper presents the development of a Flying Capacitor Multilevel Flyback Converter (FCMFC) that provides easily scalable peak output voltage, while providing rapid pulse repetition, and magnetic volume reduction. Based on a combination of the flyback and flying capacitor multilevel (FCML) boost converter topologies, the FCMFC achieves faster slew rates and peak power compared to previous pulsed power converters. The new converter improves on the conversion ratio of the flyback converter by a multiple of the number of switched-diode-capacitor (SDC) cells. It additionally distributes the high output voltage across the SDCs, yielding faster slew rates, while maintaining similar or greater power density to existing architectures. Adding the SDC stages to a series FCMFC yielded a 3kV increase in voltage pulse peak with a 385V/μs rise time net change compared to the latest series structures in the literature.