BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Electron.
Sec. Power Electronics
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating AI, Robotics, and Power Electronics for Sustainable Smart Mobility SolutionsView all articles
A 98.8%-Efficiency, Thermally-Optimized 48 V-to-12 V DC–DC Converter for High-Power Data Centers
Provisionally accepted
- Zhejiang University, Institute for Common Prosperity and Development, Hangzhou, China
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This work presents the design of a 48 V-to-12 V high-power DC–DC converter based on a resonant switched-capacitor topology. By employing zero-current switching (ZCS) control, the prototype achieves a peak efficiency of 98.8% and a full-load efficiency of 96.1% under a 70 A load condition. To address the stringent power delivery requirements in data center high-performance computing (HPC) applications, particular emphasis is placed on optimizing PCB stack-up and via structures. A comparative study of different substrate designs demonstrates that an optimized multilayer PCB architecture improves the conversion efficiency by an additional 1.5%, while reducing the temperature rise of key power devices by 9.6 °C. Experimental validation confirms that the proposed design not only achieves ultra-high conversion efficiency but also significantly enhances thermal performance. The converter consistently maintains excellent electrical characteristics and thermal stability across a wide load range, meeting the requirements of modern data center power systems for high efficiency, high power density, and high reliability.
Keywords: Cascaded Switch-Capacitor, high-performance computing, Optimized PCB Architecture, resonance, ZCS
Received: 02 Sep 2025; Accepted: 20 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ziqian Zhang
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