Design and investigation of a capacitance-coupling pre-ionized sharpening switch.

The sharpening switch is one of the most important elements in the trigger generator, which is used to sharpen the front of the trigger pulse. The breakdown performance of the sharpening switch has an important influence on the output and stability of the trigger generator. In this paper, a novel 200 kV capacitance-coupling pre-ionized sharpening switch, which can realize pre-ionization by dividing voltage through its own structural capacitances, is proposed and investigated. In order to obtain the optimal parameters of the pre-ionized sharpening switch, the influences of the electrode structure, electrode material, main gap distance, and pre-ionized gap distance on the breakdown performance are studied experimentally. The experimental results show that the electrode structure with a circular knife-edged cathode and a plate-shaped anode has the smallest breakdown jitter, followed by the needle-plate structure and the tapered ball-head structure. The stainless steel electrode has the smallest jitter, followed by graphite, aluminum, and brass electrodes. When the gap distances of the main gap and the pre-ionized gap are 13 and 1.5 mm, respectively, the breakdown stability of the pre-ionized sharpening switch is the best. Under an input voltage pulse with a rise time of about one microsecond, the jitter of the capacitance-coupling pre-ionized sharpening switch with the optimal parameters is 6.08 ns, which is about 0.6% of the rise time of the input pulse. The jitter decreases by 44.5% compared to the switch without pre-ionization. The rise time of the output pulse is sharpened to 17 ns, corresponding to a voltage rise rate of more than 11 kV/ns.

Note: Multi-gap gas switch with low trigger-threshold voltage by mounting resistors and capacitors in parallel with switch gaps.

To reduce the trigger threshold voltage of the multi-gap gas switch used for linear transformer drivers, a method is proposed by mounting resistors and capacitors in parallel with the switch gaps. Based on the circuit model of the six-gap gas switch, the gap voltage distribution during the triggering process is analyzed. When the multi-gap gas switch is triggered, the voltage distribution between gaps is mainly determined by the stray capacitance between electrodes. In such condition, the trigger voltage is not fully applied on the trigger gap, and as a consequence, a higher trigger voltage is required for obtaining a low jitter. The effects of capacitor parameters on the triggering characteristics of the switch are experimentally investigated. Compared with the original switch design, the results indicate that at a charging voltage of ±80 kV and operating at 60% of the self-breakdown voltage, the trigger voltage is reduced from 110 kV to 75 kV while the 3.2 ns jitter of the switch is preserved.