MOS power transistor and ceramic thyratron for fast high voltage pulser

A high reliability circuit has been developed in order to trigger a ceramic thyratron. The necessity of building a system highly protected from voltage and current glitches is due to the particular loads with are to be driven by the thyratron. In the circuit design, VMOS (both with 'p' or 'n' channel) and HEXFET transistors have been used. A delay time of about 60 ns between the NIM input signal and the thyratron grid voltage peak has been obtained. The delay between the NIM input signal and the thyratron trigger is about 80 ns. This apparatus has been developed in order to drive a high voltage generator, used with a self-shunted streamer chamber.