A simple zero-voltage switching technique for a single-phase inverter based on bi-directional inductor current

Abstract

The majority of soft-switching inverters often use auxiliary semiconductor switches that run for extremely brief periods to provide ZVS conditions for the main switches, potentially raising the inverter system’s cost. This work presented a simple zero-voltage switching (ZVS) approach by employing a bi-directional inductor current for the single-phase inverter, which reduced the cost of auxiliary switches and simplified the soft-switching inverter design. All switches can achieve ZVS operation without additional resonant components. The conventional PWM control strategies are applied in the proposed technique, and thus the problems existing in variable switching frequency converters are removed. This article describes the soft-switching approach and detailed circuit functioning. Different key parameters are optimized to improve efficiency. To confirm the suggested ZVS method, a hardware inverter prototype is created, built, and tested. To validate the inverter’s characteristics and validity, experimental results are presented.