Fast switching performance of gate-turn-off thyristor for intense pulsed-power supply

A peak current of 110 kA and a maximum current rise-time ratio of 44 kA/μs at the repetition rate of 100 pps were confirmed at the performance test of a switching stack consisting of ten parallel gate-turn-off thyristors (GTOs) under an enhanced gate current of up to 280 A for each GTO. The turn-on jitter was 1 ns. The GTO stack combined with a single magnetic switch produced pulses with a duration of 1.6 μs and a peak power of 510 MW at 100 pps. The peak current of 16.3 kA and the maximum current rise-time ratio of 10.2 kA/μs at the repetition rate of 100 pps were also confirmed at the performance test of a single GTO. These results lead to great advantages for intense pulsed-power supplies in lifetime and reliability because this work proved that GTOs can replace conventional short-life thyratrons which generate a peak power on the order of 1 GW.