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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Troll: A 4-MV peak voltage pulser

Conference ·
OSTI ID:6331956

A 4 MV peak voltage pulser for the Troll accelerator has been designed, fabricated, and delivered to Sandia National Laboratories by Maxwell Laboratories, Inc. The pulser is required to produce a flat-top pulse, with a variable width, to drive a cold-cathode diode. The system operates over a range of 2 to 4 MV. A 46-stage Marx generator is used to directly drive the diode. The diode impedance is relatively high (400 to 4000 ..cap omega..) and causes overshoot of the output voltage due to the stray capacitance of the Marx generator. To reduce the overshoot, a unique snubber network was used to damp out the oscillations. The pulse width is controlled over a range of 250 ns to 2 ..mu..s by a diverter switch. The switch is a hybrid two-stage spark gap, with the first gap in trigatron configuration and the second gap self-closed by overvoltage from the first gap.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (USA); Maxwell Labs., Inc., San Diego, CA (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
AC04-76DP00789
OSTI ID:
6331956
Report Number(s):
SAND-87-7031C; CONF-870656-41; ON: DE87012372
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English