Design and Simulation of Solid State Pulser with Fast Rise Time and Double-exponential Waveform

Voltage pulses with fast rise time can be obtained from Marx circuits based on avalanche transistors. In this research, the ZETEX avalanche transistors are used as the switches in a Marx circuit to generate stable voltage pulses with double-exponential waveform and fast rise time. By using these transistors, the circuit is able to generate higher pulsed voltage with fewer stages. A three stages and a ten stages Marx circuit, as well as their triggering circuits, are designed. The two Marx circuits are also tested by simulations based on the Pspice code and by experiments, results of which are consistent with each other. With the ten stages Marx circuit, we obtain positive and negative pulses with the rise time of about 1.5 ns, the amplitude above 1 100 V, and the pulse width below 5 ns. It is proved that the proposed Marx circuit equipped with avalanche transistors could be an effective kind of solid-state pulse generator.