Characterization of a 50-Ω Exposure Setup for High-Voltage Nanosecond Pulsed Electric Field Bioexperiments

An exposure system for a nanosecond pulsed electric field is presented and completely characterized in this paper. It is composed of a high-voltage generator and an applicator: the biological cuvette. The applied pulses have high intensities (up to 5 kV), short durations (3 and 10 ns), and different shapes (square, bipolar). A frequency characterization of the cuvette is carried out based on both an analytical model and experimental measurements (S₁₁) in order to determine its matching bandwidth. High voltage measurements in the time domain are performed. Results show that the cuvette is well adapted to 10-ns pulses and limited to those of 3 ns. The rise/fall times of the pulses should not be less than 1.5 ns. In addition, numerical calculation providing voltage distribution within the cuvette is performed using an in-house finite-difference time-domain code. A good level of voltage homogeneity across the cuvette electrodes is obtained, as well as consistency with experimental data for all the applied pulses.