Implementation of Control Strategy for Step-down DC-DC Converter Based on Piezoelectric Resonator

With the growth in demand for miniaturization in power electronics, the current solutions are starting to display their limits in dimensions, power densities and efficiency. To meet the previous demands, the new piezoelectric materials achieving high power densities and efficiency could be the solution to ensuring the requirements. The piezoelectric resonators (PRs) and the piezoelectric transformers (PTs) have been used previously. Unlike the PTs, the use of PRs in power electronics has not been fully explored, and their use has been limited to operating as switched capacitors. However, a new operating principle using PRs based on energy and electrical balance exhibits good performances in steady state. In this paper, our motivation is to investigate in the capability to control a dc-dc converter based on PRs using this operating principle. Indeed, this paper presents the control strategy of a new step-down DC-DC converter based on a piezoelectric resonator (PR), which is used as an energy storage element. The operating principle of the converter is also presented. Moreover, the control algorithm has been implemented in field programmable gate array (FPGA) to regulate the output voltage. The control principle is validated experimentally for input-output voltages 120 - 48 V, and achieving an efficiency up to 94% for large operating power range.