Diversified Technologies , Inc. Research Articles

Summary of Results of Solid-State Pulsed Power System Research on the NGLS Stripline Kicker Driver

Diversified Technologies Inc. (DTI) completed a four-year Small Business Innovation Research effort to research kicker drivers for Next Generation Light Source (NGLS) injectors. The NGLS specification required a 10-kV pulse into a 50- $\Omega $ resistance, with a 2-ns rise time (10%–90%), a highly repeatable flat top with pulsewidth from 5 to 40 ns, and a fall time of less than $1~\mu \text{s}$ , down to ${10}^{-4}$ of the peak value, which was a stretch of the existing state of the art. DTI explored a number of candidate architectures and specific circuits, but ultimately chose a novel derivative of the classic inductive adder circuit. This inductive adder ultimately demonstrated not only the required pulse rise times required by NGLS but also the pulses required by the Advanced Light Source upgrade at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a number of other commercial, medical, and other nonaccelerator-based users.

Focus on bioinstrumentation and biotechnologies

Focus on bioinstrumentation and biotechnologies

High-Voltage IGBT Switching Arrays

Under a Navy SBIR, Diversified Technologies, Inc. (DTI) will design and demonstrate scalable solid state switches in support of future U.S. Navy needs related to power supplies and inverters. One switch approach being developed consists of a massive series-parallel array of high-voltage insulated gate bipolar transistors that are switched synchronously in order to achieve high peak currents. DTI is evolving its technology in high-voltage switching to include very high peak currents. As an objective of the SBIR effort, DTI will utilize these high-power switches to build a power converter. From a practical viewpoint, high-voltage switches that can operate reliably at large currents have potential applications in missile launchers, high-power actuators, and radar power supplies. The massive series-parallel switch array approach has the potential to provide a compact, reliable, and effective switching solution to converting sufficient electrical energy to kinetic energy that could meet a variety of Navy applications. In this paper, DTI reviews current switch requirements and recent SBIR progress toward the goal of demonstrating massive series-parallel high-voltage switching that meets the Navy SBIR requirements.