The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 12, 2019
Filed:
Sep. 14, 2015
The Regents of the University of Colorado, a Body Corporate, Boulder, CO (US);
Khurram K. Afridi, Boulder, CO (US);
Yu Ni, Boulder, CO (US);
Minjie Chen, Brighton, MA (US);
Curtis Serrano, Orinda, CA (US);
Benjamin Montgomery, San Diego, CA (US);
David Perreault, Andover, MA (US);
Saad Pervaiz, Boulder, CO (US);
The Regents of the University of Colorado, a body corporated, Denver, CO (US);
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (US);
Abstract
SSC energy buffer circuit includes a switching network and a plurality of energy storage capacitors. The switching network may operate at a relatively low switching frequency and can take advantage of soft charging of the energy storage capacitors to reduce loss. Efficiency of the SSC energy buffer circuit can be extremely high compared with the efficiency of other energy buffer circuits. The SSC energy buffer architecture exhibits losses that scale with the amount of energy buffered, such that a relatively high efficiency can be achieved across a desired operating range. Improvements in SSC energy buffer circuits include, in various implementations, the use of ground reference gate drive, the elimination of a separate precharge circuit through control of at least a portion of the switches of the SSC energy buffer circuit, and/or optimized ratio of capacitance values of two or more capacitors in an SSC energy buffer circuit.