Voltages produced by microbial fuel cells (MFCs) cannot be sustainably increased by linking them in series due to voltage reversal, which substantially reduces stack voltages. It was shown here that MFC voltages can be increased with continuous power production using an electronic circuit containing two sets of multiple capacitors that were alternately charged and discharged (every one second)....

This paper proposes the virtual flux based direct power control for Vienna rectifier. No need for the input voltage sensors, the current regulation loop and PWM voltage modulation block along with the active and reactive power decoupling are some of the salient advantages of this method that make it suitable for controlling the conventional active rectifiers. However, due to the three-level nat...

Recently, since single phase loads and dispersed generators become widespread, unbalanced voltage in distribution line become an important problem for voltage management. One of them is that the control of a conventional voltage regulation device become difficult because of the difference of the magnitude of the line voltages, the other one is increase of 3rd harmonic voltages. The authors prop...

We present ramped voltage data from a new nitride used in our fabrication process. Using the same fabrication flow, we measured increased lifetimes for capacitors using this new dielectric. Using the linear field model, this translates into capacitors that can sustain higher applied voltages before they fail.

This study focuses on the effects of different temperatures and temperature cycling on breakdown voltages of tantalum capacitors. High and low temperature tests and temperature cycling tests were done. In all tests the used temperatures were inside component’s operating temperature limits. After the tests, capacitors were tested for their breakdown voltage. According to results of this research...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) calibration service for voltage transformers and high-voltage capacitors is described. The service for voltage transformers provides measurements of ratio correction factors and phase angles at primary voltages up to 170 kV and secondary voltages as low as 10 V at 60 Hz. Calibrations at frequencies from 50-400 Hz are available over a mor...

In the conventional DC-AC inverter consisting of two DC-DC converters with unipolar output capacitors, the output capacitor voltages of the DC-DC converters must be higher than the DC input voltage. To overcome this weakness, this paper proposes a single-phase DC-AC inverter consisting of two embedded Z-source converters with bipolar output capacitors. The proposed inverter is composed of two e...

For medium-voltage power electronic applications, multilevel converters have become a popular option. While conventional twolevel converters utilize a direct series connection of switches to meet medium-voltage requirements, multilevel converters allow a higher voltage handling capability with reduced harmonic distortion and lower switching power losses. One of the most important requirements i...

Parallel-plate capacitors based on ferroelectric thin films are considered as high density capacitors and varactors. Due to the small thickness of the ferroelectric films, typically less than 1.0 μm, high electric fields are generated even at relatively low voltages inducing piezoelectric effect associated with electrostriction. This induced piezoelectric effect has negative impact on ferroelec...