Stepping Up DC Voltage

There is a good article about 'boost converters' in Wikipedia.

Let me give you some information regarding to choppers.

Yes, choppers are also used for step-up but only DC to DC mostly for DC motors. The most fundamental control of a machine or a process is the ON and OFF control. This scheme of control has two states, the ON stat and when power is removed it is said to be its OFF state.
Now, chopper as the name indicates, is a device which which chopps off the supply in ON and OFF periods respectively.
In other words, we can say that a copper is a kind of switch which allows the power flow in the circuit for a required duration.

DC to DC Converters(Choppers) take input from fixed voltage DC supply such as battery or output of uncontrolled rectifier. The ouput of the chopper is fixed or variable DC voltage and these choppers are normally used in DC drives for controlling the speed of the motor n forward and reverse dirction.

DC motor voltage Em can be controlled downward from the source voltage E by changing the on to off time ratio of the chopper. The average voltage Em

Em = xE
where x is the duty factor of the chopper and is given by x=T1/T2, where T is the cycle time of the chopper.

In the case of step up Chopper.
When chopper is on during T1 the energy from DC generator is stored in the inductor L which is connected to the DC generator. When the chopper is off during T2 the inductor current is forced to flow to the DC power source E through the diode. For steady state operation, there must be zero average voltage across the inductor. Therefore, the postive volt seconds on L during the on interval T1 must be equal to the negative volt-second when the chopper is open.
Therefore, this step up chopper is used to produce a voltage higher than the voltage Em.
When the motor slowsdown the mechanical energy of the load returns to the power source through the chopper this is the so called regenerative braking in which the DC motor operates as a generator.

Other options

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~herniter/Data_Sheets/LM2577.pdf
http://focus.ti.com/lit/an/slva061/slva061.pdf
http://www.elenota.pl/pdf/STMicroelectronics/3721.pdf
http://www.intersil.com/data/an/AN9208.pdf
http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/HB206-D.PDF
http://vela.pb.bialystok.pl/~kaie/kaie-md/UP/KA34063appnote.pdf

i think you could use a power inverter. It takes 12 volt dc, and converts it to 110 or 220 a/c power. then, run one wire through a rectifier diode, it should become 110 or 220 dc. I think charles