New Industry Products

99% Efficient 48V-to-12V Switched Capacitor Converter Reference Design

April 29, 2019 by Scott McMahan

Infineon Technologies AG introduced its zero-voltage-switching (ZSC) switched capacitor converter reference design. The ZSC switched capacitor converter features a two-stage architecture for 48V applications to power CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, SoCs, and memory. The company says its full system concept for 48V architecture paves a way towards 99 percent of efficiency.

Combining ZSC board with CoolGaN™ 600V based solutions results in an optimized power flow and unparalleled performance for future datacenters. The company will debut the latest ZSC converter board at the PCIM 2019 tradeshow in Nuremberg, Germany.

According to Infineon, the ZSC converter delivers the highest efficiency and power density for applications using 48V.

It generates an intermediate bus voltage through capacitive energy transfer with soft switching of the power MOSFETs. This immediate bus voltage enables an easy and low-risk migration path for legacy 12V systems to a 48V infrastructure at significantly improved total cost of ownership.

When combined with Infineon's multi-phase buck regulators, it offers overall efficiency of more than 94% and power density for 48V input systems above the industry's average.

The board features microcontrollers, drivers and switches from Infineon. It comprises well-matched 25V and 40V OptiMOS™ 5 and OptiMOS 6 MOSFETs as well as EiceDRIVER™ 2EDi gate driver ICs. The XMC™ family of microcontrollers complements the ZSC switched capacitor converter.

Infineon says it is easy to implement as a voltage regulator module (VRM) or down (VRD) design depending upon system requirements and limitations.

The bidirectional power transfer capability of the ZSC converter offers ultimate flexibility for implementing high-efficiency and compact bus converters that can provide voltage conversion from 48V to 12V, or vice versa.

Additionally, the converter can be easily configured to supply different conversion ratios (2:1, 4:1, 6:1, 8:1, 10:1, 12:1) with the same set of components for system-level efficiency optimization. In a 4:1 configuration, the ZSC converter can achieve peak efficiency of up to 99 percent at 600W with a power density of 780W/inch2.

The same design can deliver up to 1kW with excellent thermal performance thanks to its high power conversion efficiency. The ZSC board is available upon request.

Key features and benefits

  • High efficiency/power density
  • Soft-switching of Infineon's best-in-class OptiMOS™ 5/6 MOSFETs
  • Simplicity in design
  • Easy to implement with XMC™ microcontrollers
  • Bi-directional power flow
  • Flexibility in implementation
  • Module or down design
  • Scalable architecture
  • Easy to scale based on power level and bus voltage
  • Robust system design
  • Intelligent fault communication between XMC™ microcontroller and multi-phase digital controller