Investigation of a novel solid-state dual meander pulse-forming line with 10 kV-class withstand voltage

Abstract

The meander pulse-forming line (MPFL) is one kind of prospective solid-state device for compact, reliable pulsed power systems. This paper demonstrates that a dual meander pulse-forming line (DMPFL) further improves its withstand voltage upon previous MPFLs by optimizing the distribution of the fringing electric field around the electrodes to mitigate the field enhancement. The DMPFL is formed by connecting two MPFLs in parallel on a glass-ceramic substrate. The dispersion characteristics of the DMPFL including its characteristic impedance and electric length are analyzed. Then, the delay time and pulse-forming characteristics are simulated with computer simulation technology (CST) Microwave Studio software. On this basis, experiments are performed to investigate its practical withstand voltage and pulse-forming ability. The experimental results agree with the calculation and simulation results. At last, we tried to integrate the Blumlein module based on the DMPFL with the photoconductive semiconductor switch to form a compact solid-state pulse generator.