The design of a compact bipolar pulse current generator based on solid-state Marx adder

This paper proposes a novel bipolar high-voltage Marx pulse current generator for inductive load. The paper first analyzes the feasibility and design parameters of the proposed design, and then elaborates the structure design and optimization. IGBT modules build up the 10-stage Marx adder, and the capacitor in each stage is charged by series-parallel resonant voltage converter. A novel compensation strategy is proposed for the energy loss of the inductive load and the characteristics of switching devices. 1 kA peak current bipolar pulse is achieved with 300 ns rise/fall time and 1.5 μs flattop on a 2 μH inductor. Compared with traditional PFN current generator, this solid-state pulse current generator has similar performance while being easier to adjust and is more compact in shape.