The Triggered Behavior of a Controlled Corona Stabilized Cascade Switch

Corona stabilized switches have been shown to have advantages in pulse power switching applications due to their high repetition rates and low jitter. Work performed in recent years by the High Voltage Technologies Group within the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde has shown that the operating voltage range of such switches can be extended by using a multigap cascade configuration. One particular multigap topology, filled with pressurized atmospheric air, was shown to operate at 80 kV with a switching jitter of ~ 2 ns. It has since been shown that, by modifying the topology of the corona sources on the electrodes, it is possible to control the grading of the voltage distribution across the gaps in the cascade. The voltages across each gap and the self-break behavior of the cascade were found to be in close agreement with the values predicted from the corona emission characteristics for the tested electrode topologies. This paper reports on a further examination of the behavior of the corona controlled switching topology, where the triggered operation of the switch has been investigated for different voltage distributions across the cascade gaps.