Optimal Control Method of Magnetic Switch Used in High-Voltage Power Supply

In high-voltage systems such as in pulse power, commonly used semiconductor devices cannot be applied to the generation part of high-voltage pulse. However, unlike semiconductor, the magnetic switch cannot control its own ON and OFF operation. Moreover, with the magnetic switch the system efficiency goes down with load variation, and arcs caused by saturation of the energy in reactor have a negative effect on the whole system. This letter presents the way to effectively control the magnetic switch applied to high-voltage pulse power supplies such as plasma generators. The efficiency of the system is optimized by automatically controlling the magnetic switch based on the load variation. Then, the energy the load requires is supplied to the system, which leads to the stability of the system. The proposed method is confirmed by experiments on a designed system.