Performance characteristics of pseudospark plasma switches

Precise triggering is one of the most important issues with high power pseudospark switches. The hollow-cathode geometry offers a variety of trigger systems. For sealed-off devices used to carry high coulombic charge, a trigger unit based upon flashover was developed. Delay and jitter are about 100 ns and 10 ns, respectively. Medium power switches for high repetition rates are usually equipped with a trigger unit based upon an auxiliary glow discharge. This trigger methods provides delay numbers of 40 ns. One problem of great concern is still the appearance of current quenching at relatively low discharge currents. Recent experiments point out that quenching is a inevitable process with the original pseudospark geometry. This is observed over a wide range of parameters.