ELECTRIC POWER COMPONENTS AND SYSTEMS, vol.39, no.1, pp.31-45, 2011 (SCI-Expanded)
This article presents a new zero-current switching technique for a single-phase full-bridge sinusoidal pulse width modulation inverter. Two auxiliary switches and a resonant branch are attached to a conventional single-phase full-bridge inverter. The resonant branch can be controlled independently from the main power switches. This technique decreases turn-on and turn-off switching losses and does not require any snubber capacitor. The technique can be applied to DC/DC converters and DC/AC inverters with suitable switching algorithms. Both theoretical analysis and application of the proposed technique have been realized. It was seen that the proposed technique has 45% less switching losses and better performance than the hard-switching technique for the same load and switching frequency. The experimental results also approve the effectiveness of the zero-switching technique.