Development of a High-Frequency Burst Pulse Generator for Cancer Cell Treatment and Comparison Between a High-Power Burst Pulse and a Single Pulse

Cancer treatment based on ultrashort pulses of strong electric fields has been developed as a novel biological application. This article focuses on the design of a compact high-power nanosecond pulsed electromagnetic wave generator for realizing cancer treatment via ultrashort pulsed electric fields. For this purpose, we developed a pulsed power generator that continuously outputs multiple pulses via a nonlinear transmission line (NLTL) using magnetic switches. The NLTL comprises a ladder of capacitors and saturable inductors and generates a pulse train by delaying the propagation of each pulse using the magnetic switch of each ladder. In this article, we achieved a higher output frequency compared to the previous generator. The frequency was increased from 13 to 150 MHz by employing a coaxial structure instead of discrete components. In addition, we demonstrate that the application of burst pulses to cancer cells is more effective than single pulses under the same conditions.