An Experimental Study on Step-Up DC–DC Converters for Organic Photovoltaic Cells

This work studies two circuit topologies to step-up the voltage supplied by an organic photovoltaic (OPV) cell. Comparison and validation of the proposed topologies are accomplished throughout analytical, simulation, and experimental results. Two circuit solutions were found more suitable to boost t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of low power electronics and applications Vol. 12; no. 2; p. 20
Main Authors dos Santos, P. Mendonça, Serralheiro, António J., Borges, Beatriz, Torres, João Paulo N., Charas, Ana
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2022
Subjects
Circuits
CMOS
Design
Energy
Energy harvesting
Glass substrates
inductive DC–DC converters
Internet of Things
Low voltage
MOSFETs
organic photovoltaic cells
Photovoltaic cells
Semiconductors
Simulation
Topology
Voltage converters (DC to DC)
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Summary:This work studies two circuit topologies to step-up the voltage supplied by an organic photovoltaic (OPV) cell. Comparison and validation of the proposed topologies are accomplished throughout analytical, simulation, and experimental results. Two circuit solutions were found more suitable to boost the harvested OPV cell low voltage, depending on the load condition: the classical hard-switching boost converter and a multilevel boost converter. Both experimental circuits include the drive of the MOSFET switch based on an LC oscillator at 1.2 MHz, allowing the implementation of a conversion system, supplied by voltages as low as 500 mV, with output voltages from 1.2 V up to 7 V, under solar simulator conditions. The circuit area for each converter prototype is 2.35 cm2, with a total area below 3.0 cm2 for the overall energy harvesting system, including the OPV cell, which makes this proposal an extremely compact solution for ultra-low power harvesting applications.
ISSN:2079-9268
2079-9268
DOI:10.3390/jlpea12020020