Design and Implementation of Novel Series Trigger Circuit for Xenon Flash Lamp Driver

This paper describes the design and implementation of novel trigger circuit (23 kV, 1.7 μs, and 0.66 J/pulse) for xenon flash lamp driver. The design is based on a modified flyback circuit in the discontinuous conduction mode to take advantage of both generating the high voltage from the resonance with output capacitor and connecting the series with main pulse circuit using the flyback transformer which can carry the full current of several kiloampere at high-voltage side. This design eliminates the requirement for additional high-voltage protection devices in a xenon flash lamp driver. In addition, the unique high-voltage flyback transformer is designed with high turn ratio and low leakage inductance. The detailed design procedure for the resonant circuit at the output side of the flyback circuit with the permissible range of the parasitic component of the transformer is described on the basis of simplified analysis of resonant circuit. To verify the proposed design, computer simulation based on PSpice software and experiments for the proposed triggering circuit with a main pulse circuit was performed. For the experiment, the trigger circuit is developed with the specification of maximum 23-kV, 0.66-J/pulse output and tested with a xenon flash lamp (Heraeus P4101) driver consisting of a 1.5-kV, 36-kJ/s main pulse circuit and a 2.5-kW (500 V, 5 A) simmer circuit. The experiment is performed in both triggering without the simmer mode and combining the simmer mode. From the simulation and experimental results, it is verified that the triggering circuit can be used effectively, as it exhibits reliable ignition.