US Patent 10498236 Two-phase three-level converter and controller therefor

Disclosed are multilevel buck converters, and controllers and methods for operating such converters. Embodiments improve the voltage gain (Vo/Vin) of multi-level DC-DC converters, such as three-level converters, that is imposed by a duty cycle limitation in conventional approaches. According to certain embodiments, the duty cycle of switches is controlled to so that the converter output voltage is increased.