Study of Solid-State Pulse Adder for Narrow Pulses Over Capacitive Load

High-voltage narrow pulses with short rise time and falling time are preferential in capacitive loads such as dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs). Therefore, a compact all-solid-state pulse adder based on solid-state linear transformer driver topology is proposed to generate high-voltage sub-microsecond resonant pulses with voltage amplitude up to 30 kV. A 20-stage prototype of the proposed pulse adder was built. The influence of the load capacitance, the turns ratio, and the number of stages on the waveforms and the voltage gain of output pulses are analyzed. To weaken the electromagnetic interference and lower the requirement of precise synchronous switching, a compromise is made between the pulsewidth and electromagnetic compatibility. High-voltage resonant pulses with a voltage amplitude up to 30 kV, a pulsewidth shorter than 200 ns, a rise time of 72 ns, and a frequency of 1 kHz were obtained over a 20-pF capacitive load.