Study on a Planar Multi-Gap Multi-Channel Gas Switch

Abstract

To reduce the inductance and prolong the life of the switch in linear transformer driver, diving the current into multiple discharge channels is effective. Thus, a planar multi-gap multi-channel gas switch with trigger plate was developed in this paper. The switch has five channels in parallel and is triggered by the coupling capacitance between the electrodes and the trigger plate. The results from experiments show that the switch can be triggered reliably and the framing camera images provide the evidence of multiple discharge channels. We calculated the circuit’s and switch’s inductance and observed the erosion spots of the electrodes, which indicates that multiple discharge channels indeed help to reduce the inductance and prolong the life of the switch. The factors that influence the number of discharge channels were also studied, mainly including the working voltage and crosswise resistor. These work and results can give some guiding principles and advices to design a multi-channel switch in the future.