High-Frequency Load Independent Electroporator Circuit Design for Nanosecond Pulse Generation

The technique of pores formation in the cell/tissue membrane by an applied electric field across the membrane is known as electroporation. The electroporation results in drug delivery through the cells but it suffers the challenges of inefficient transportation of drugs owing to the non-linearities of multicellular structure. However, medical applications require a pre-set of electrical pulses to be delivered to the load in order for electroporation to be effective. This paper presents a novel load independent electroporator design for nanosecond pulse generation. The presented electroporator is capable of forming rectangular pulses for a broad range of load parameters 10k to 100k. To generate short nanosecond pulses in the range of 5 ns, and 10 ns independent of the electroporator load, a variable load resistor ranging from 10k to 100k is used that overcomes the use of a crowbar driving circuit. The electroporator is capable of generating pulses with a pulse repetition frequency of 30 MHz and it is designed to handle bipolar and unipolar pulse sequences.