Conveners
5.1 & 5.2 Opening and Closing Switches II
- Jason Sanders (Transient Plasma Systems, Inc.)
High-voltage MOSFETs are fundamentally limited in rise-time and PRF because of the slow transit-time of carriers through the drift region that supports the high-voltage. Large numbers of low voltage devices are used to overcome this limitation, but systems are complex, rise-time limited, and can exhibit electrical instability caused by fast transients. In contrast, photoconductive switches...
The near simultaneous laser triggering of hundreds to thousands of Photoconductive Semiconductor Switches (PCSSs) is an enabling technology being pursued by both the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Defense (DOD) for pulse power (PP) and directed energy (DE) systems. Applications include the development of EMP or HPM phased array sources and large-scale pulsed power systems...
Gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMT) are of great interest for pulsed power applications due to the proven capabilities of wide band gap semiconductors, such as silicon carbide (SiC) transistors. With further advances in GaN power semiconductors, there’s an interest in the evaluation of their performance under repetitive overcurrent operation in power electronics...
SiC (silicon carbide) GTOs (gate turn-off) are a substantiated choice for increased power density and thermal dissipating capabilities in pulsed power and power electronics applications due to their wide-bandgap characteristics. For the transition of Si (silicon) power devices to SiC, it is imperative to evaluate the long-term reliability of newly-developed SiC devices. The testbed consists of...
The use of solid-state semiconductor switches in compact pulsed power systems requires high-voltage, high-current, and fast switching capabilities. The recent advancements in wide bandgap semiconductor switches have allowed for development of SiC MOSFETs with increased hold-off voltage (from 1’s to 10’s of kV) and low on-state resistance (10’s of mΩ) that are suitable for many of these pulsed...
There is still an ongoing interest and need for high power (30-70kV/5-10kA) gas-filled switches in high energy accelerator facilities and pulsed power applications. Principally low-pressure, one-gap cold cathode pseudospark switches (PSS) have demonstrated to be an alternative to thyratrons for hold-off voltages up to 30kV. In present and future high energy accelerator facilities, the design...
Commercially available, low dI/dt (0.4 kA/µs), silicon thyristors have previously been investigated as fast, high-power, switches. Fast switching is achieved by applying a steeply rising (dV/dt > 1 kV/ns) overvoltage pulse across the thyristor’s main electrodes: fast turn-on occurs when the voltage amplitude is twice the static breakdown voltage. Under such conditions, the thyristor goes into...
