A Fully Integrated Three-Level Isolated Single-Stage PFC Converter

For low-cost isolated ac/dc power converters adopting high-voltage dc-link, research efforts focus on single-stage multilevel topologies. This paper proposes a new single-stage three-level isolated ac/dc PFC converter for high dc-link voltage low-power applications, achieved through an effective integration of ac/dc and dc/dc stages, where all of the switches are shared between two operations. With the proposed converter and switching scheme, input current shaping and output voltage regulation can be achieved simultaneously without introducing additional switches or switching actions. In addition, the middle two switches are turned on under zero current in discontinuous conduction mode operation, and the upper and bottom switches are turned on under zero voltage. Due to the flexible dc-link voltage structure, high power factor can be achieved at high line voltage. A 500 W/48 V prototype is designed to serve as the proof of concept, which exhibits 90.8% peak efficiency at low input line voltage.