Performance spectrum of optical triggered thyristor switches for electric weapon system

Based on the technology of optical triggered thyristor switches for commercial applications, i.e. high voltages DC transmission, a common effort of Rheinmetall and EUPEC was started in order to investigate the performance characteristics of such switches for pulsed power applications. In the first step a 22 kV stacked set-up, based on 7.5 kV wavers, was tested and certified for being applied in the compact 120 kJ PPS-Module for supplying the 120 mm ETC gun of Rheinmetall. Current magnitudes up to 45 kA with pulse lengths up to 2 ms were applied. Compared to electrical triggered Thyristors the optical triggering system is of great electronic simplicity and provides a complete potential separation of the trigger generator from the high voltage components. Further investigations on the wafer design have been performed in order to increase the current and di/dt limits of such switches. It is the goal to apply this switch technology for other electric weapons such as lasers or active armor with their requirements of shorter and higher current pulses than the ETC gun. A variety of tests have been performed in order to meet those requirements. The paper presents a selection of the test results and discusses the performance spectrum in comparison with the pulsed power supply requirements of short pulse electric weapon applications.