Characteristics of a velvet cathode under high repetition rate pulse operation
- College of Opto-electric Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Hunan 410073 (China)
As commonly used material for cold cathodes, velvet works well in single shot and low repetition rate (rep-rate) high-power microwave (HPM) sources. In order to determine the feasibility of velvet cathodes under high rep-rate operation, a series of experiments are carried out on a high-power diode, driven by a {approx}300 kV, {approx}6 ns, {approx}100 {omega}, and 1-300 Hz rep-rate pulser, Torch 02. Characteristics of vacuum compatibility and cathode lifetime under different pulse rep-rate are focused on in this paper. Results of time-resolved pressure history, diode performance, shot-to-shot reproducibility, and velvet microstructure changes are presented. As the rep-rate increases, the equilibrium pressure grows hyperlinearly and the velvet lifetime decreases sharply. At 300 Hz, the pressure in the given diode exceeded 1 Pa, and the utility shots decreased to 2000 pulses for nonstop mode. While, until the velvet begins to degrade, the pulse-to-pulse instability of diode voltage and current is quite small, even under high rep-rate conditions. Possible reasons for the operation limits are discussed, and methods to improve the performance of a rep-rate velvet cathode are also suggested. These results may be of interest to the repetitive HPM systems with cold cathodes.
- OSTI ID:
- 21272734
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 16, Issue 10; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3254043; (c) 2009 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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