Voltage doubler

A voltage doubler is an electronic circuit which charges capacitors from the input voltage and switches these charges in such a way that, in the ideal case, exactly twice the voltage is produced at the output as at its input.
The simplest of these circuits is a form of <a href="/facts/Rectifier/me8XDxND">rectifier</a> which take an AC voltage as input and outputs a doubled DC voltage. The switching elements are simple diodes and they are driven to switch state merely by the alternating voltage of the input. DC-to-DC voltage doublers cannot switch in this way and require a driving circuit to control the switching. They frequently also require a switching element that can be controlled directly, such as a <a href="/facts/Transistor/Bmr8zwL0">transistor</a>, rather than relying on the voltage across the switch as in the simple AC-to-DC case.
Voltage doublers are a variety of <a href="/facts/Voltage_multiplier/pm6sqLLl">voltage multiplier</a> circuits. Many, but not all, voltage doubler circuits can be viewed as a single stage of a higher order multiplier: cascading identical stages together achieves a greater voltage multiplication.

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Voltage doubler