Development of photoconductive switches for stacked Blumlein pulsers

The stacked Blumlein pulse generators consist of several triaxial Blumleins stacked in series at one end. The lines are charged in parallel and synchronously commutated with a single switching element at the other end using a conventional thyratron, spark gap, or photoconductive switch. Several intense photoconductively-switched stacked Blumlein pulsers producing high power nanosecond pulses with risetimes as fast as 200 ps have been demonstrated. These devices have compact geometries and are commutated by avalanche type GaAs photoconductive switches triggered by low-power laser diodes. This report presents the progress in the development and use of these novel pulsers. Special attention is placed on testing a diamond-treated switch that drastically improves high gain operation and lifetime in our Blumlein pulsers.