Research of High-Voltage Pulse Generator Based on Marx Circuit and Pulse Transformer

This article proposes the use of an all-solid-state Marx generator to drive a pulse transformer to output positive high-voltage pulses, reducing the stages of Marx generator and the insulation requirements, and improving the system reliability. The freewheeling circuit is designed in the Marx main circuit to avoid the saturation of transformer core so that it can work at the repetition frequency. At the same time, the charge on the capacitor load has a discharge circuit to reduce the pulse stretching. To verify the proposed scheme, a prototype is developed in this article. The Marx generator has 28 stages, which can output a 20-kV high-voltage pulse, pulse transformer with a ratio of 1:3. The experimental results show that when driving a 10-pF capacitive load, the proposed pulse power supply can output high-voltage pulses in a near-rectangular shape with an amplitude of 45 kV, a pulsewidth of $1~\mu $ s, a frequency of 300 Hz, a rise time of 240 ns, and a fall time of 500 ns. This article also investigates the basis for the selection of the modulating resistor and the efficiency of this pulse power supply.