Gate Driver Circuit for Short Pulse Generation in Solid-State Pulsed Power Modulators

This paper proposes a gate driver circuit for short pulse generation in solid-state pulsed power modulators. The proposed circuit effectively drives high-side switches by implementing an isolated voltage source with a diode and capacitor at each secondary side of a multi-winding transformer. In addition, since it applies voltages to the transformer primary side for a short time, the gate signal with long duty cycle can be produced without the transformer saturation problem. Moreover, by employing the positive and negative voltages asymmetrically, the proposed circuit can generate a short gate signal while supplying sufficient energy to drive semiconductor switches. Experimental results from a 2kV solid-state pulsed power modulator are presented to verify the proposed work.