Self-triggering all-solid-state Marx generator

Abstract

With the wide application of all-solid-state high-voltage pulse generators in the fields of material modification, biomedicine and industry, all-solid-state pulse generators are developing in the direction of miniaturization, intelligence and modularization. To further reduce the volume and cost of the power supply, this paper proposes a positive self-triggering all-solid-state Marx generator topology. It only needs to provide an isolated signal to control the turn-on and turn-off of discharging switch in the first stage, and the gates of the adjacent-stage discharging switches will be automatically charged and discharged through the inter-stage capacitors, so that they turn on and off one by one. This topology makes the driving circuit of the multiple switches in the Marx generators much simpler and does not need to provide a multi-channel driving power supply with isolated power supplies, and also avoids the dynamic and static voltage balancing problems of the switches. Based on this topology, a 17-stage positive polarity Marx generator prototype is built, and the voltage amplitudes and pulse widths are continuously adjustable. It outputs 10 kV positive high-voltage pulses at a repetition frequency of 100 Hz over a 10 kΩ resistive load. The leading edge is approximately 328 ns. The prototype is small in size and stable in work, which verifies the feasibility of this topology.