Characterization of the laser-triggered vacuum switches

In this paper, a multi-electrode laser-triggered vacuum switch (LTVS) is developed to optimize the triggered vacuum switch (TVS) and meet the requirements of the pulsed power technology. The relationship between the laser trigger energy, operating voltage, polarity, average energy of the spot and the trigger characteristics which mainly contain the delay time, jitter time and minimum operating voltage is analyzed in detail. The interaction between a thermal mechanism and an ion collision mechanism is proposed to explain the switch conduction. It is concluded that the minimum delay time and the jitter time can reach 15 ns and ± 10 ns, respectively. The minimum operating voltage of 60 V is observed. Finally, the delay time is mainly decided by the average energy of the spot in the case of certain triggering energy and the polarity effect is one of the main factors affecting trigger stability.