A Novel Two Switches Based DC-DC Multilevel Voltage Multiplier

This paper proposes a novel DC-DC converter: the DC-DC Multilevel Voltage Multiplier (MVM). An Nx MVM can be built with two switches, 2N-2 diodes and 2N-2 capacitors, free of magnetic components. It is based on the multilevel converters principle and designed for unidirectional power transfer applications. Each device blocks one voltage level, then high voltage converters can be synthesized with low voltage devices. The main advantage of this topology is the reduced number of transistors and gate drives. Possible applications have a wide range from low power silicon-based voltage multipliers, implemented inside microchips, to medium power level DC links for multilevel inverters based distributed generation (DG) systems, where a capacitor's voltage balancing is a challenge for more than three levels. Experimental results prove the principle of such converters.