Solid-State Pulsed Power Generator Based on Blumlein PFN Using Saturable Pulse Transformer
Longyu Zhuang, Junxiang Yang, Taichi Sugai, Akira Tokuchi, Weihua Jiang
Abstract
A solid-state pulsed power generator has been developed. It is based on Blumlein pulse forming network (PFN) combined with saturable pulse transformer (SPT). The primary circuit is switched by a switching unit consisting of three MOS-gated thyristors connected in parallel. The SPT functions both as a transformer to increase the voltage and as a closing switch for the secondary circuit. The PFN on the secondary side is charged by the transformer and switched by the SPT so that a pulsed output is generated on a matched load. In the demonstration experiment using one module, an output with peak voltage of ~10.4 kV and pulsewidth of ~160 ns was obtained on a resistive load of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$52~\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> . Furthermore, three identical modules, sharing a common primary circuit, have been connected in series to demonstrate voltage adding, where a peak output voltage of ~30 kV was obtained on a load of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$156~\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> with energy efficiency of ~54 %. This pulsed power generator has been tested at repetition rate of 20 kHz in burst mode.