Development of high repetition rate pulse generator based on LCCL resonant capacitor charging topology and CLCL resonant pulse generating scheme

A compact high voltage repetitive pulse generator capable of producing pulses of magnitude of 14 kV, rise time of 30 ns and pulse repetition frequency of 9 kHz has been developed. The fourth order resonant network based constant current DC power supply is developed which provides soft switching and load independent current during initial charging of the capacitor. The zero current switching reduces the switching losses in the circuit which greatly increases the efficiency. The pulse generating circuit consists of the capacitors and air-cored inductors, IGBT switching element and bank of snappy recovery diodes. In this scheme, turn off characteristics of diode is used as an opening switch, which when interrupts current flowing through the inductor, generates a voltage pulse at the output. The entire topology is based completely on resonant network and solid state switching devices. Details of the topology, design equations, simulated and experimentally obtained results are narrated in detail in this paper. The pulse generating unit reliably produced repetitive pulses with temporal jitter of 1-2 ns.