Fault-tolerance wide voltage conversion gain DC/DC converter for more electric aircraft

In this paper,a fault-tolerance wide voltage conversion gain DC/DC converter for More Electric Aircraft(MEA)is proposed.The proposed converter consists of a basic Cuk converter module and n expandable units.By adjusting the operation state of the expandable units,the voltage conversion gain of the proposed converter could be regulated,which makes it available for wide voltage conversion applications.Especially,since mutual redundancy can be realized between the basic Cuk converter module and the expandable units,the converter can continuously work when an unpredictable fault occurs to the fault-tolerant parts of the proposed converter,which reflects the fault tolerance of the converter and significantly improves the reliability of the system.Moreover,the advantages of small input current ripple,automatic current sharing and low voltage stress are also integrated in this converter.The working principle and features of the proposed converter are mainly introduced,and an experimental prototype with 800 W output power has been manufactured to verify the practicability and availability of the proposed converter.

Graphene quantum dots assisted photovoltage and efficiency enhancement in CdSe quantum dot sensitized solar cells

CdSe quantum dot sensitized solar cells （QDSCs） modified with graphene quantum dots （GQDs） have been successfully achieved in this work for the first time. Satisfactorily, the optimized photovoltage （Voc） of the modified QDSCs was approximately 0.04 V higher than that of plain CdSe QDSCs, consequently improving the photovoltaic performance of the resulting QDSCs. Served as a novel coating on the CdSe QD sensitized photoanode, GQDs played a vital role in improving Voc due to the suppressed charge recombination which has been confirmed by electron impedance spectroscopy as well as transient photovoltage decay measure- ments. Moreover, different adsorption sequences, concentration and deposition time of GQDs have also been systematically investigated to boost the power conversion efficiency （PCE） of CdSe QDSCs. After the coating of CdSe with GQDs, the resulting champion CdSe QDSCs exhibited an improved PCE of 6.59% under AM 1.5G full one sun illumination.

Revisiting the conversion reaction voltage and the reversibility of the CuF2 electrode in Li-ion batteries

Deviation between thermodynamic and experimental voltages is one of the key issues in Li-ion conversion-type electrode materials; the factor that affects this phenomenon has not been understood well in spite of its importance. In this work, we combine first principles calculations and electrochemical experiments with characterization tools to probe the conversion reaction voltage of transition metal difluorides MF2（M = Fe, Ni, and Cu）. We find that the conversion reaction voltage is heavily dependent on the size of the metal nanoparticles generated. The surface energy of metal nanoparticles appears to penalize the reaction energy, which results in a lower voltage compared to the thermodynamic voltage of a bulk-phase reaction. Furthermore, we develop a reversible CuF2 electrode coated with NiO. Electron energy loss spectroscopy （EELS） elemental maps demonstrate that the lithiation process mostly occurs in the area of high NiO content. This suggests that NiO can be considered a suitable artificial solid electrolyte interphase that prevents direct contact between Cu nanoparticles and the electrolyte. Thus, it alleviates Cu dissolution into the electrolyte and improves the reversibility of CuF2.

Non-isolated stacked bidirectional soft-switching DC-DC converter with PWM plus phase-shift control scheme

In this paper, a non-isolated stacked bidirectional DC-DC converter with zero-voltage-switching(ZVS) is introduced for the high step-up/step-down conversion systems. The extremely narrow turn-on and/or turn-off duty cycle existing in the conventional bidirectional buck-boost converters can be extended due to the stacked module configuration for large voltage conversion ratio applications. Furthermore, the switch voltage stress is halved because of the series connection of half bridge modules. The PWM plus phase-shift control strategy is employed, where the duty cycle is adopted to regulate the voltages between the input and output sides and the phaseshift angle is applied to achieve the power flow regulation.This decoupled control scheme can not only realize seamless bidirectional transition operation, but also achieve adaptive voltage balance for the power switches. In addition, ZVS soft-switching operation for all active switches is realized to minimize the switching losses. Finally, a prototype of 1 kW operating at 100 kHz is built and tested to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed converter and the control strategy.

A stepless-power-reconfigurable converter for a constant current underwater observatory

The conversion from constant current(CC)to constant voltage(CV)is one of the key technologies of CC underwater observatory systems.A shunt regulator with high stability and high reliability is usually used.Applications,however,are limited by high heat dissipation and low efficiency.In this paper,with an improved shunt regulation method,a novel concept of stepless power reconfiguration(SPR)for the CC/CV module is proposed.In cases with stable or slowly changing load,two modes of CC/CV conversion are proposed to reduce unnecessary power loss of the shunt regulator while being able to retain any operatorpreset power margin in the system:(1)the manual SPR(MSPR)method based on single-loop control method;(2)the automatic SPR(ASPR)method based on inner-outer loop control method.The efficiency of the system is analyzed.How to select some key parameters of the system is discussed.Experimental results show that MSPR and ASPR are both effective and practical methods to reduce heat dissipation and improve the efficiency of the CC/CV module,while the high stability of the shunt regulator remains.