Coupled inductor in a DC-DC converter
AssigneeLEN Technology Limited
InventorsJingquan Chen, Chuan Ni
Life of this patent
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Abstract
This disclosure is related to the technical field of magnets, and in particular to a method for applying a coupled inductor to a DC-DC converter providing a DC current output, and based on the number of phases of the DC-DC converter, the coupled inductor is designed to have a corresponding number of windings, the windings are reversely coupled to cancel out the magnetizing fields to avoid flux saturation of the magnet material under high current excitation, and the coupled inductor has air gaps, the leakage flux in the air gap induced by each winding is in the same direction, the leakage magnetic flux is used to achieve the filtering of the output current.
Claims14
A device, comprising:
- a first magnet,
- a second magnet opposite to the first magnet in a first direction;
- a plurality of discrete magnetic columns positioned between the first magnet and the second magnet and within peripheral ends of each of the first or the second magnet in a second direction that is substantially perpendicular to the first direction;
- a plurality of windings each wound around a respective one of the plurality of discrete magnetic columns;
- and
- an air gap among the first magnet, the second magnet and the discrete magnetic columns, the air gap including a first air gap segment adjacent to a peripheral end of at least one of the first magnet and the second magnet and a second air gap segment adjacent to two of the plurality of the discrete magnetic columns;
- wherein a peripheral end of at least one of the first magnet or the second magnet protrudes toward another one of the first magnet or the second magnet.
A method, comprising:
- providing a coupled inductor, the coupled inductor including a first magnet, a second magnet opposite to the first magnet and at least two windings reversely coupled between the first magnet and the second magnet through discrete magnetic columns, a peripheral end of the first magnet protruding toward the second magnet such that a distance between the peripheral end of the first magnet and the second magnet is smaller than a height of each of the discrete magnetic columns;
- coupling the coupled inductor to outputs of multiple power devices of a multi-phase DC-DC converter;
- and
- operating the multi-phase DC-DC converter for a DC current output.
A device, comprising:
- a first magnet,
- a second magnet opposite to the first magnet in a first direction;
- a plurality of discrete magnetic columns positioned between the first magnet and the second magnet and within peripheral ends of each of the first magnet or the second magnet in a second direction that is substantially perpendicular to the first direction;
- a plurality of windings each adjacent to a respective one of the plurality of discrete magnetic columns;
- and
- an air gap among the first magnet, the second magnet and the discrete magnetic columns, the air gap including a first air gap segment adjacent to a peripheral end of at least one of the first magnet and the second magnet and a second air gap segment adjacent to two of the plurality of the discrete magnetic columns;
- wherein a distance between a peripheral end of the first magnet and an adjacent peripheral end of the second magnet is smaller than a height of a discrete magnetic column of the plurality of discrete magnetic columns in the first direction.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.