The single-stage DC–AC converters are capable of boosting the DC voltage and conversion to AC by incorporating the shoot-through state between the dead time intervals of traditional inverters. However, these suffer from second-order voltage and current reflections at the DC input side. The paper proposes a sliding mode control (SMC) based control of single-stage inverters. The proposed control is used to reduce second-order ripples currents (SRCs) by inductor impedance shaping which significantly reduces SRC propagation to the source. This improves the life span of source and converter components without any external ripple reduction circuitry. The proposed methodology is applied to two topologies-Quasi-ZSI, and Embedded Switched Boost Inverter. The proposed method is verified by simulation and experimentation. © 2021, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.