Pseudo-spark switch (PSS) characteristics under different operation conditions

Abstract

The present paper concentrates on the characteristics of the pseudospark switch (PSS) designed in a previous work. The special characteristics of PSS make it a replacement for other high voltage switches such as thyratrons and ordinary high-pressure spark gaps. PSS is characterized by short rise time and small jitter time. The pseudo park chamber consists of two hollow cylindrical electrodes made of a stainless steel material (type 306L) separated by an insulator. The insulator used in our design is a glazed ceramic 70 mm in diameter and 3.5 mm in thickness. A PSS with an anode voltage of 29.2 kV, and a current of 3.6 kA and 11 ns rise time was achieved and used successfully at a repetition rate of about 2.2 kHz. A simple trigger circuit designed, built, and used effectively reaching more than 1.56 kV trigger pulse which is sufficient to ignite the argon gas inside the cathode to cause a breakdown. A non-inductive dummy load is designed to be a new technique to find the accurate value of the PSS inductance. A jitter time of ±10 ns pulses is observed to occur in a reliable manner for more than 6 h of continuous operation. In this research, the important parameters of this switch like rise time, peak current, and anode voltage were studied at various values of charging capacitance. The lifetime of this system is depending on the kind of the electrode material and on the type of insulation material in the main gap of the pseudospark switch.

High-voltage and high-current crowbar system based on pseudospark switches: from system design to verification

“…It needs to have the characteristics of low inductance and low resistance, which are far less than that of inductive coil load. TDI-series pseudospark switches [18,[22][23][24][25][26], also known as cold cathode thyratrons, work on the left-hand branch of the Paschen curve and are used as main switch and crowbar switch, as shown in figure 6. The TDI-series pseudospark switches have a ceramic/metal shell, filled with hydrogen (deuterium) as buffer gas at working pressure of 20-60 Pa.…”

Triggering of cold-cathode thyratron in electric circuit with grounded grid

“…The discharge is sustained between the ring anode A 1 and the cathode C 1 due to the power supply V 1 . Typically, this is a steady state hollow-cathode glow discharge with a current of (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20) the current flows to the electrode C 1 . This current will be denoted as i 1 .…”

“…Then the terms cold-cathode thyratron or grounded-grid thyratron are also used in the current literature. [4][5][6][7] In early [1][2][3][4][5] and present-day [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] publications, there are described a variety of switch prototypes for different applications on the basis of the demountable experimental chambers with external gas filling. As a result of the investigations, the sealed-off switches had been developed 5 in which the operating gas pressure is maintained due to a heated hydrogen reservoir.…”

A study of pulsed high voltage driven hollow-cathode electron beam sources through synchronous optical trigger

“…The complex physical mechanism of hollow-cathode discharges and the interaction of the electron beam with the space charge plasma in a low-vacuum environment result in the formation of a unique spatial and temporal distribution of the electron beam current and energy [9][10][11][12][13]. It has been shown that hollow-cathode pulsed electron beam is characteristic with high current densities (10 2 -10 3 A/cm 2 ), high energy (10-40 keV), and short pulse durations (10 −7 -10 −6 s) in the earlier experimental researches [14][15][16][17].…”