A Kuthi - Nanosecond Pulse Generator Using A Fast Recovery Diode
A Kuthi - Nanosecond Pulse Generator Using A Fast Recovery Diode
A Kuthi - Nanosecond Pulse Generator Using A Fast Recovery Diode
DIODE
A. Kuthi, P. Gabrielsson, M. Behrend and M. Gundersen
Department of Electrical Engineering - Electrophysics
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0271
Abstract
Design and operation of a fast recovery diode based
pulse generator is presented. The generator produces 3 ns
wide, 600 V amplitude pulses into 50 ohm load at the
maximum repetition rate of 100 kHz. Pulses shorter than
10 ns are essential for the studies of biological cell
response to high electric fields while avoiding ordinary
electroporation effects dominant at long pulses. The use
of a mass-produced fast recovery surface-mount rectifier
diode in this circuit substantially simplifies the generator
and results in low cost and very small footprint. Similar
diode switched pulse generators have been described in
the literature using mostly custom fabricated snaprecovery diodes. Here we give an example of an ordinary
low cost diode performing similarly to the custom
fabricated counterpart. The diode switched circuit relaxes
the requirement on the speed of the main closing switch,
in our case a low cost power MOSFET saturable core
transformer combination.
I. INTRODUCTION
Electroperturbation of biological cells can be achieved
by the influence of pulsed electric fields. The voltage
induced across a cell membrane depends on the pulse
length and pulse amplitude. Pulses longer than ~1 s will
charge the outer cell membrane and can lead to the
opening of pores, temporary or permanent, the latter
usually resulting in cell death [1]. Pulses much shorter
than ~1 s can affect cell nuclei without adversely
affecting the outer cell membrane. An interesting effect
of pulses of a few tens of ns duration and ~510 kV/mm
amplitude is triggering of apoptosis or programmed cell
death [2, 3]. There is a need for shorter, higher amplitude
electric pulses for cell biology research to probe and
manipulate intracellular structures.
Desired pulse amplitude depends on the exact
geometry of the sample chamber and electrode system
and on the duration of the pulse. The design target for
this "NanoPulser" was a pulse duration substantially less
II. DESIGN
The design starts from the required pulse shape and
amplitude at the load and works backward to the main
energy source.
The actual pulse is generated by a diode acting as an
opening switch, interrupting the current in an inductor and
commuting it into the load resistance as shown in Fig. 1.
The pulse generating cycle begins with switch S2 closed
and S1 open, so the first capacitor is fully charged and the
second is empty. Then switch S2 opens and the subsequent
closing of switch S1 generates a half cycle of forward
current through the diode. This establishes stored charge
in the diode depletion layer and transfers the initial charge
from the first to the second capacitor. At the end of this
This work was primarily funded by the Compact-Pulsed Power MURI program funded by the Director of Defense
Research and Engineering (DDR&E) and managed by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and was
also funded by the Army Research Office (ARO).
email: [email protected]
+V
Rch
C
S1
S2
I2
I1
+150Vin
4,5
2
6,7
4420
1u 1,8
IRFS430A
+18Vin
1:4
1n
270p
30n
90ns
TTL in 10n
50
1u
2
1k
IRFS430A
1,8
4420
450
50
6,7
4,5
100
Current [A]
20
86
108
20
40
25
50
75
Time [ns]
100
125
D. MOSFET Switch
The primary switch, S1, consists of two IRFS430A
MOSFETs operating in parallel. Each MOSFET has a
DC on resistance of 1.7 , so the two parallel devices
present a best-case loss resistance in the primary resonant
circuit of 0.85 . Actual losses are significantly higher
due to the turn on switching speed of ~15 ns. The gate
input capacitance of the MOSFETs is only 150 pF. The
6 A rated 4420 type gate driver ICs can saturate the gates,
thus the turn on time is determined by the inherent gate
resistance of the MOSFET devices.
The switch connects the charged up capacitor C1 across
the primary of the transformer. In the absence of losses
this C1 capacitor should be the same effective capacitance
as the secondary C2, so C1 = (ns/np)2 C2. This arrangement
has the highest efficiency, as there is no charge remaining
in C1 when C2 is fully charged. Due to losses, however,
we have doubled the value of C1 to 30 nF, as this enabled
us to stay within 150V primary charging voltage. The
reduced efficiency is not important in this application, but
must be carefully considered when designing similar
circuits for higher output powers.
Another effect of the charge remaining in the primary
capacitor is that the core reset is now dependent on the
on-time of the switch S1, thus causing hysteresis in the
output pulses for long S1 on-times. We avoid hysteresis
by optimizing core reset, limiting the S1 on time to 90 ns.
III. OPERATION
The present system uses a resistive charging supply.
The pulser has been tested at repetition rates up to 100
kHz with resistive charging, higher repetition rates can be
achieved with resonant charging methods at the cost of
increased complexity, especially in the area of optimizing
core reset. Ultimately the repetition rate is limited to
5 MHz by the duration of the charge transfer sequence.
Typical output into 50 is shown in Fig. 4. The pulse
amplitude is 600 V, and the FWHM is 3 ns.
150
Voltage [V]
103 107.5
600
400
200
0
200
80
90
100
110
Tim e [ns ]
120
130
140
+150V in
Saturable core
-26dB out @ 50
+ 18V in
90ns gate in
Pulse out into 50
4 x MURS360 diodes
IV. REFERENCES
[1] E. Neumann, A.E. Sowers, and C.A. Jordan,
Electroporation and electrofusion in cell biology
Plenum Press, New York, NY 1989.
[2] J. Deng, R.H. Stark, and K.H. Schoenbach, A
Nanosecond
Pulse
Generator
for
Intracellular
electromanipulation 24th Int. Power Modulator
Symposium, June 26-29, 2000. pages 47-50.
[3] M. Gundersen, P.T. Vernier, L. Marcu, A. Li, X. Zhu,
A.Z. Gallam, T. Katsouleas, C. Young, M. Behrend, and
C.M. Craft, Ultrashort pulse electroporation: applications
of high pulsed electric fields to induce caspase activation
of human lymphocytes Proc. 25th Int. IEEE Power
Modulator Symp. (2002) pp.667
[4] M. Behrend, A. Kuthi, X. Gu, P. T. Vernier, L.
Marcu, C. M. Craft, and M. A. Gundersen, Pulse
generators for pulsed electric field exposure of biological
cells and tissues, Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation,
IEEE Transactions on 10 (2003) 820-825.
[5] M. Behrend, A. Kuthi, P.T. Vernier, L. Marcu, C.
Craft, and M. Gundersen, Micropulser for real time
microscopy of cell electroperturbation, Proc. 25th Int.
IEEE Power Modulator Symp. (2002) pp. 358.
[6] I.V. Grekhov, V.M. Efanov, A.F. Kardo-Sysoev, and
S.V. Shenderey, Formation of high nanosecond voltage
drop across semiconductor diode Sov. Tech. Phys. Lett.,
Vol. 9. (1983) n4.
[7] Y. Kotov, G. Mesyats, S. Rufkin, A. Filatov, and S.
Lyubutin, A novel nanosecond semiconductor opening
switch for megavolt repetitive pulsed power technology:
Experiment and applicationsProc. IX Int. IEEE Pulsed
Power Conf., Albuquerque, NM, 1993, pp. 134-139.
[8] P. T. Vernier, Y. Sun, L. Marcu, S. Salemi, C. M.
Craft, and M. A. Gundersen, Calcium bursts induced by
nanosecond electric pulses, Biochem. Biophys. Res.
Commun. 310 (2003) 286-295.