Long pulse switching properties of pseudospark switches

Increasing demands on high voltage, high power switches have led to the development of a new kind of low pressure hollow electrode switches called Pseudospark Switches ('PSS', electrical triggering methods) and the Back-of-the-cathode Lighted Thyratron ('BLT', optical triggering). For high power excimer laser applications, a small series of brazed ceramic metal switches has been manufactured and tested for lifetime and performance. in this contribution, results of tests at very long pulse durations are reported. The very encouraging results suggest that repetitive multi-kilojoule switching with single-channel PSSs is possible at a multi-kiloampere level. Repetition rates of up to 1 kHz seem to be feasible from the experimental results. This makes the PSS a promising candidate for flashlamp pumped high average power solid state lasers for material processing. Switching of high-power flashlamps by PSS seems to be even more interesting due to the observed phenomenon of complete switch recovery during current zero after conducting a full sine wave of 560 /spl mu/sec duration and /spl tilde/6 kA in amplitude.