Experimental Study on Synchronous Discharge of Ten Multigap Multichannel Gas Switches

The synchronous characteristics of ten multigap multichannel gas switches have been investigated on one stage of linear transformer driver. An equivalent circuit has been used to simulate the closures of ten switches with different delay times and jitters. The simulated result indicates that the synchronous closing of ten switches can be well performed when the switch jitter is less than 10 ns. The influence of the switch jitter on the rise time is much greater than that on the amplitude of the output current when the switch jitter is about 20–30 ns. The experimental result indicates that a 100-ns 100-kA output current can be achieved with about six switches closing synchronously at ±65-kV charge voltage. To improve the performance of the switches, two methods have been proposed for future work.