Studies and performance of decreased rail gap switch inductance by enhancing multichanneling via gas mixture

In pulsed power technology, a pressurized gap switch has been mainly utilized to produce a high power pulse. A multichannel rail gap switch has been widely utilized not only to obtain extremely low inductance, low resistance switching but also to reduce the damage of the electrode. A self-elected multichannel rail gap switch was developed. The switch was operated with pure SF/sub 6/ and the mixture of SF/sub 6/ with N/sub 2/, channel numbers of 20 and 100 were obtained with low switching inductance's of 15 nH and 9 nH, respectively.