IEEE Access, cilt.13, ss.135074-135088, 2025 (SCI-Expanded)
In recent years, the growing demand for efficient voltage boosting solutions has been driven by advancements in renewable energy systems, electric vehicles (EVs), and photovoltaic (PV) arrays. However, conventional magnetic-based inverters remain bulky and inefficient for compact, high-performance applications, limiting their use in emerging technologies. To address this, the objective of this study is to develop a compact, single-source switched-capacitor multilevel inverter (SC-MLI) topology that achieves high voltage gain with minimal component count. The proposed 13-level SC-MLI employs a novel switched-capacitor structure and is evaluated under Natural Level Control (NLC) and Sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) schemes. Theoretical analysis, MATLAB/Simulink simulations, and experimental validation on a 100–1000 W prototype are carried out, along with thermal modeling in PLECS. The results show that the topology achieves a voltage gain of 3, maintains capacitor self-balancing without auxiliary circuits, and reaches a peak efficiency of 97.2% (simulation) and 95.3% (experiment). Moreover, it meets harmonic standards, reduces total harmonic distortion (THD), and outperforms recent single-source designs in terms of accuracy, cost, and control simplicity. This makes the proposed topology highly suitable for grid-connected PV systems, electric vehicle chargers, and compact renewable energy interfaces, with theoretical scalability toward medium- and high-power applications.