Education

High Voltage Pulsers for Universities and Academic Institutions

Academic laboratories drive Pockels cells, transducers, detectors and switching elements that all need fast, clean high voltage pulses into awkward loads. Directed Energy builds solid state pulse generators for that work, from 50 V modules up to 10 kV bipolar instruments. This page covers where they get used and what to weigh when choosing one.

University and Academic Research Applications

• Time of flight measurementTime of flight setups gate a detector or a source with a precisely timed high voltage pulse, and the timing has to repeat shot after shot. External trigger inputs on the PVX family let the pulser share a clock with the rest of the instrument chain.
• Q switchingQ switch drive is the classic high voltage pulser application: a fast edge into a mostly capacitive electro optic element. Rise time and fall time both matter, which is why the half bridge output stage used in the PVX-4141 gives 25 ns edges in both directions rather than a fast rise and a slow decay.
• Beam steeringElectro optic deflectors and scanners need a settled voltage step, since any overshoot or ringing turns into pointing error. Bipolar output lets the element be driven symmetrically about ground instead of being biased to one side.
• Pockels cellsA Pockels cell looks electrically like a small capacitor, and the drive requirement follows from the half wave voltage of the crystal and how fast you need to reach it. The PVX-4110 supplies plus or minus 10,000 V with 60 ns edges for cells that need the full range.
• Acoustic transducersUltrasonic and acoustic transducers are driven with a short high voltage pulse and then allowed to ring. Pulse width control down to well under 100 ns determines the bandwidth of the acoustic burst that comes out.
• Microchannel platesMCP gating requires a fast, well defined voltage step across a high impedance structure, often at repetition rates in the kilohertz range. A pulser designed for capacitive loads is the right tool here, since load capacitance sets the achievable edge speed.
• Photomultiplier tubes and image intensifiersGated detection uses a high voltage pulse to switch a tube or intensifier on for a narrow window and reject light outside it. The gate has to be clean, because ringing on the gate edge appears as artifact in the recorded frame.

Products That Work for You

• Open frame modulesModule level pulsers, supplied as a board or a board on a heatsink, mount inside a larger assembly and keep the high voltage path short. The PVM-1001 reaches 950 V in under 10 ns in this form factor.
• Enclosed modulesEnclosed units add a housing and defined connections, which matters more than usual at high voltage because it puts a barrier between the student and the output. The PVM-4210 packages two output channels driven from common control logic in a single module.
• Integrated benchtop and rack mount systemsBenchtop instruments such as the PVX-4000-2kV include an internal pulse engine and RS232 and USB control, so the pulse can be set from a script rather than a front panel. Rack mount configurations suit a permanent experiment that other people will inherit.
• Bipolar outputThe PVX-4000 and PVX-4100 series use a direct coupled half bridge output, giving symmetric rise and fall and low power dissipation. Bipolar drive is what many electro optic elements want, and it avoids the DC offset a single ended driver leaves on the load.
• A voltage range that spans the workThe line runs from the PVX-2506 at 50 V up through the PVX-4151 at plus or minus 1,500 V, the PVX-4141 at 3,500 V, the PVX-4130 at 6,000 V and the PVX-4110 at 10,000 V. Higher voltage generally costs repetition rate, so choose the lowest voltage that actually drives your load.

Support and Expertise So You Can Stay Focused

• Application support from pulse generator specialistsLoad capacitance, cable length and average power are the three things that most often decide whether a pulser works in a given setup. Describing the load before ordering is faster than discovering the limit on the bench.
• Writing and publishingA published instrument with stated rise time, pulse width and amplitude is straightforward to document in a methods section. That matters when another group tries to reproduce the measurement.
• TeachingModule level pulsers are affordable enough that several teams can each have one, so students work hands on instead of queuing for a single station. High voltage also teaches respect for procedure in a way that low voltage benches do not.
• ResearchMulti year programs need pulsers that hold their specification and can be serviced rather than replaced. Solid state designs with no gas switches or consumable elements are what make that practical.
• Science and experimentationRequirements change as an experiment develops, so pick a pulser with headroom in voltage, width and repetition rate. Adjustable pulse width from tens of nanoseconds through to DC, controlled by the input gate, covers a wide span of future setups.

Send the load you need to drive, its capacitance, the voltage and polarity required, and the pulse width and repetition rate. An applications engineer will identify the closest pulse generator and flag any limit, thermal or capacitive, that you would otherwise find later.