Design of a simple and low-cost solid-state ultra-fast high-voltage switch

Ultra-fast high-voltage switches (UFHVSs) are a core component of time-of-flight mass spectrometers for realizing high accuracy ion acceleration, deceleration, and temporal focusing. The desirable features performance UFHVSs include large range adjustability pulse width, maximum output amplitude, minute rising falling times. Besides the simplicity driver circuit, total cost whole device is also critical to its practical applications. In this work, we present low-cost easy-fabrication 5000 V bipolar solid-state UFHVS high-resolution spectrometer. A double-pulse transformer isolates circuit’s high- low-voltage sides synchronously drives series-connected cascode SiC FETs form push–pull topology. This scheme allows transmitting drive signals with long widths but without magnetic saturation transformer. Testing results show that pulses reach voltage width 150 µs, times 8.5 18.3 ns, respectively. More importantly, they have nearly no decay.