High voltage igniter based on discontinuous working mode of piezoelectric transformers

With a lot of advantages, piezoelectric transformer (PT) has become an ideal device in some technical applications. This paper introduces and implements a control circuit that drives a PT in discontinuous working mode. In this working mode, a PT can be overloaded up to a certain level in a specific of time that all its characteristics are still remained. The results shown here may be useful solutions for technical applications which require a high power for a finite time, and an igniter for high intensity discharge (HID) lamps is an example.