Characteristics of Triggered Vacuum Switch With Single Axial Magnetic Electrode for High-Frequency Current Interruption

For the purpose of repetitive pulsed power applications, specially designed triggered vacuum switches (TVSs) were tested under different high-frequency currents in this contribution. Two TVSs named as TVS-1 and TVS-2, respectively, were designed to investigate the high-frequency current interrupting characteristics with or without an axial magnetic field (AMF) aid. The TVS with AMF at the cup-shaped anode can generate a magnetic field parallel to the arc column by the flowing current itself. TVSs show promise for use in high-current and high-frequency conversion and switching circuits. The V/I characteristic results show that the arc voltage increases with increasing the arc current. The maximum interrupting main current has a sharp decreasing trend with increasing the current frequency from zero to 1 kHz, whereas the curves tend to be flat after 1 kHz. The AMF in the anode gives great aid to decrease the arc voltage and increase the high-frequency current interrupting capacity of the TVS.