Switching the stacked Blumlein pulsers status and issues

The repetitive stacked Blumlein pulse power generators developed at the University of Texas at Dallas consist of several triaxial Blumleins stacked in series at one end. The lines are charged in parallel and synchronously commuted with a single switch at the other end. In this way, relatively low charging voltages are multiplied to give a high discharge voltage across an arbitrary load. To date, the stacked Blumlein pulsers have produced high power waveforms with risetimes and repetition rates in the range of 5-50 ns and 1-200 Hz, respectively, using a conventional thyratron or spark gap. To generate waveforms with sub-nanosecond risetimes at kilo-Hertz repetition rates, fast switching devices such as photoconductive switches must be utilized. This paper describes the feasibility of an intense pulse power source based upon stacked Blumlein technology by adapting the design for use with photoconductive switches.