Experimental study of electrode erosion and aging process of a specially designed gas switch under repetitive arc discharge

Abstract

In this paper, a study concerning self-breakdown voltage characteristics, electrode erosion, and degradation of the insulator, of a two-electrode spark-gap switch has been presented based on experiments. A 6 μF pulse capacitor and a DC high voltage source (set at −40 kV) were utilized to achieve ∼0.1 pulses per second repetitive arc discharge between two fixed Cu-W (Cu30/W70) alloy electrodes in the 1.2 L airtight chamber of the switch. With average transfer charge of 2.2 C per shot, this switch was tested for 5800 shots altogether. The results demonstrated the electrode erosion rate of the cathode was 6.3434×10−6 cm3/C whereas that of anode was 5.4691×10−6 cm3/C. Besides, by analyzing electrode surfaces' morphology and PTFE insulator surfaces' compositions after 5800 shots with the help of a scanning electron microscope, a dynamic 3D aspheric metrology instrument, an X-ray photoelectron spectrometer, a metallographic microscope, and a Mettler-Toledo analytical balance, some evidence of physical processes and chemical reactions between plasma channel, electrode materials, and insulation materials could be observed. Moreover, the chamber was opened and inspected for 10 times during the whole procedure, thus providing an overall description of the variation of the switch. It should also be pointed out that owing to complex mechanisms during the aging process, the self-breakdown voltage followed a mixed Normal distribution other than any other simple distributions.