Resonant bi-polar DC pulse power supply for electroporation applications

Electroporation is a technique that uses high pulsed electric fields to create pores in biological cell walls for medical, liquid sterilization and other applications. Many systems use mono-polar pulses for simplicity but electro-migration can limit electrode life. The following paper demonstrates a resonant circuit design for creating high voltage bi-polar dc pulses using a simple control strategy. The circuit topology consists of two Radio Frequency (RF) amplifiers each coupled to a multi-level resonant rectifier employing capacitive isolation and operating at 15 MHz. The RF signals generated by the amplifiers themselves are used to control the pulse duration and output polarity. Any sequence of positive and negative pulse trains can be generated between several μs through dc. This paper presents a proof of concept design providing 800 V positive and negative pulses into a resistive load.