An exposure system for a nanosecond pulsed electric field is presented and completely characterized in this paper. It is composed of a high-voltage generator and an applicator: the biological cuvette. The applied pulses have high intensities (up to 5 kV), short durations (3 and 10 ns), and different shapes (square, bipolar). A frequency characterization of the cuvette is carried out based on both an analytical model and experimental measurements ( S (11)) in order to determine its matching bandwidth. High voltage measurements in the time domain are performed. Results show that the cuvette is well adapted to 10-ns pulses and limited to those of 3 ns. The rise/fall times of the pulses should not be less than 1.5 ns. In addition, numerical calculation providing voltage distribution within the cuvette is performed using an in-house finite-difference time-domain code. A good level of voltage homogeneity across the cuvette electrodes is obtained, as well as consistency with experimental data for all the applied pulses.
In this letter, an experimental and quantitative study on the resistance behavior of a photoconductive semiconductor switch (PCSS) is reported. The study of the PCSS behavior is important for an accurate integration in a nanosecond pulse shaping generator. The effect of the bias voltage and the optical pulse energy on the switching efficiency is presented. The shift of the PCSS absorption threshold under the bias voltage is also described. The minimum resistance reached by the silicon semiconductor during the temporal switching is 3.8 for 4-kV bias voltage and 48-J optical energy.Index Terms-High voltage, nanosecond and picosecond pulse generator, optical energy, photoconductive switch resistance, voltage-switching efficiency.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.