Surface-discharge characteristics in a ferrite-cathode diode

The surface-discharge characteristics of a HV diode with a planar ferrite cathode are described. This experimental setup consists of a constant HV power supply, a polarity inversion line pulser with a 200 m coaxial cable, a turbomolecular pump and a discharge chamber. The chamber was of a diode type which was evacuated by a turbomolecular pump with a pressure of 13.3×10^-3 Pa and was composed of a tungsten disk anode, a planar ferrite cathode, and a polymethylmethacrylate tube body. The cathode was set perpendicular to the anode plane, and the space between the anode and cathode electrodes had a value of 0.5 mm. The coaxial cable of the pulser was charged from 10 to 40 kV by the power supply, and the rectangular pulses with output voltages of -1× the charged voltage were produced with short rise times of ~20 ns. The effective duration of the pulse was determined by the cable length and had a value of ~1 μs. The process of the flashover investigated in this report consisted of two stages. In the first stage, because the discharge current flowed inside the cathode plate, the current was primarily regulated by the cathode impedance in proportion to the resistance. Next, the current substantially increased with corresponding growth of the surface discharge on the ferrite cathode. The duration of the initial current increased with the thickness of the cathode and the diameter of the contact electrode. In the present work, the maximum current was determined by the characteristic impedance of the pulser cable since the discharge impedance in the diode substantially decreased during the surface discharge