Soldered contact effect on wire array Z-pinches

Experiments are conducted on the 16-wire aluminum Z-pinch arrays with both slow and fast risetimes wherein the initiation, ablation, implosion, and stagnation phases are compared for both soldered and unsoldered arrays. Time-dependent X-ray signals and self-emission data are measured and collected using a XUV 4-frame camera and an optical streak camera. Results show that in negative polarity, soldering appeared to produce a smaller radius pinch and improve X-ray yield variability in properly massed arrays.