Liquid Dielectric Breakdown Study Under Sub Microsecond Pulse Conditions Using Tesla Based Pulse Generator

Liquid dielectric breakdown properties for the development of compact and efficient intermediate energy storage devices for compact pulsed power applications have been studied. Tesla transformer based high voltage sub microsecond pulse generator
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, suitable electrical diagnostics (i.e., V-dot, and Rogowski coil) are indigenously developed for the study. Experiments are performed on water and heavy water $( \varepsilon _{r}=78$, $\sigma \lt 1 \mu \mathrm {S} /$cm) by applying few tens of kilo volts of few tens of nanosecond (ns) pulse under uniform electric field conditions. The study carried out for various experimental parameters such as different inter electrode gaps and electrode materials
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. In addition to the electrical diagnostics, optical diagnostics viz. absorption spectroscopy and emission spectroscopy are used for understating the electrical breakdown properties such as chemical changes due to discharge in the liquids. Further, the discharge mechanisms i.e., discharge initiation at surface of the electrode and propagation towards opposite electrode in the water is observed using fast camera (4 PICOS ICCD). The outcome of the experiments will be presented.