title: Note: Design and tests of a 13 kA-6.5 kV thyristor switch for a pulsed inductive vacuum ultraviolet source.
abstract: In this paper, the design, construction, and test procedure of a closing switch prototype based on thyristors is described. In particular, details are given about the design criteria and about the triggering board architecture, which is a high side biased, self supplied unit using the electrical energy derived from a local snubber network for the gate drive. The structure guarantees a hard firing gate pulse for the required high dI/dt application. Further, the results of the prototype tests are presented and discussed. The stack assembly has a holding voltage of 6.5 kV and is used for switching a series resonant circuit with a ringing frequency of 12 kHz for a pulsed inductive vacuum ultraviolet source. Maximum current amplitudes of 13 kA and pulse energies of more than 600 J were switched during the test procedure.
authors.affiliation: Plasmaphysics Group, Institute of Applied Physics, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main 60438, Germany.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Teske
authors.forename: B-J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jacoby
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Schweizer
authors.forename: J Chao
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Sun