Evaluation of BJTs as Closing Switch of Miniaturized Marx Generator

The micro plasma technology is used in various fieldssuch as processing or chemical analysis of minutematerial, short-wavelength light source, and plasmafunction device. The plasmas can be generated by anelectric discharge. The miniaturized generator was used toproduce these plasmas in the micro-scale area. For suchbackground, the miniaturized Marx generator which hasBipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs) as closing switcheswas developed to generate micro plasmas. In theminiaturized Marx generator, BJTs were operated inavalanche mode to obtain a faster switching speed with nsorder. In this paper, three kinds of BJTs which havedifferent collector current each others were evaluated asclosing switch. In the experiment, the BJTs were operatedin avalanche mode with higher applied voltage (abouttwice voltage rating) into the between collector andemitter of BJTs. As the result, as Vc increases, theswitching time of BJTs which operated in the avalanchemode was decreases. And, the peak of Ic of three kinds ofBJTs which operated in avalanche mode was almost same