Improved flash-board for plasma injection diode

As the plasma sources of the plasma injection type pulsed ion diodes, a set of flash-boards are operated to improve the characteristics. The produced plasma flows are measured with a biased ion collector. The main experimental results obtained here are as follows. There is an optimum gap length of the flashboards to get maximum flux of the produced plasma, though the effect is not so remarkable. To obtain the better characteristics of the boards, it is effective to apply the voltage pulse with the shorter rise time and to use separate capacitors which can fix the respective electrode potential at the ground level. The plasma flux is increased with the capacitance of the source capacitor in the driver circuit, and also with the charged voltage. On the contrary, the capacitance of the peaking capacitor affects weakly the plasma flux.