HIGH-REPETITION-RATE HYDROGEN MARX GENERATOR

The use of high-pressure hydrogen gas in sparkgap switches has enabled order-of-magnitude improvement in their recovery time without resorting to gas flow. Triggering such switches at voltages well below selfbreak can result in additional improvement. Recent tests at the Pulsed Power Technology Branch have demonstrated 100-ps recovery of a hydrogen spark gap at 50 kV, 170 U, and 12 kJ. Work is underway to demonstrate similar recovery times at voltages up to 500 kV in a 5-pulse burst. The investigation of such high-repetition-rate, high-voltage hydrogen spark-gap switches requires the concurrent development of devices capable of triggering them. Typical two-pulse test beds used for obtaining switch recovery data require only a single-shot trigger. The high-pressure hydrogen switch experiment currently underway, however, requires a compact device capable of triggering a 500-kV switch in a multiplepulse burst at repetition rates of up to 10 kHz. risetime of the pulses should be in the few-nanosecond range with pulse amplitudes greater than 100 kV.