Marx generator

Marx generator diagrams; Although the left capacitor

has the greatest charge rate, the generator is
typically allowed to charge for a long period of time,

and all capacitors eventually reach the same charge

voltage.
A Marx generator is an electrical circuit
first described by Erwin Otto Marx in
1924.[1] Its purpose is to generate a high-
voltage pulse from a low-voltage DC
supply. Marx generators are used in high-
energy physics experiments, as well as to
simulate the effects of lightning on
power-line gear and aviation equipment.
A bank of 36 Marx generators is used by
Sandia National Laboratories to generate
X-rays in their Z Machine.

Principle of operation
The circuit generates a high-voltage
pulse by charging a number of capacitors
in parallel, then suddenly connecting
them in series. See the circuit above. At
first, n capacitors (C) are charged in
parallel to a voltage VC by a high-voltage
DC power supply through the resistors
(RC). The spark gaps used as switches
have the voltage VC across them, but the
gaps have a breakdown voltage greater
than VC, so they all behave as open
circuits while the capacitors charge. The
last gap isolates the output of the
generator from the load; without that gap,
the load would prevent the capacitors
from charging. To create the output
pulse, the first spark gap is caused to
break down (triggered); the breakdown
effectively shorts the gap, placing the
first two capacitors in series, applying a
voltage of about 2VC across the second
spark gap.[2] Consequently, the second
gap breaks down to add the third
capacitor to the "stack", and the process
continues to sequentially break down all
of the gaps. This process of the spark
gaps connecting the capacitors in series
to create the high voltage is called
erection. The last gap connects the
output of the series "stack" of capacitors
to the load. Ideally, the output voltage will
be nVC, the number of capacitors times
the charging voltage, but in practice the
value is less. Note that none of the
charging resistors Rc are subjected to
more than the charging voltage even
when the capacitors have been erected.
The charge available is limited to the
charge on the capacitors, so the output is
a brief pulse as the capacitors discharge
through the load. At some point, the
spark gaps stop conducting, and the
high-voltage supply begins charging the
capacitors again.

The principle of multiplying voltage by

charging capacitors in parallel and
discharging them in series is also used in
the voltage multiplier circuit, used to
produce high voltages for laser printers
and cathode ray tube television sets,
which has similarities to this circuit. The
difference is that the voltage multiplier is
powered with alternating current and
produces a steady DC output voltage,
whereas the Marx generator produces a
pulse.

Marx Marx Marx generator

generator generator (standing rectangular
used for at utility structure, left) in high-
testing high- trade fair, voltage lab at Jabalpur
voltage Leipzig, Engineering College,
power- East Jabalpur, India
transmissio Germany,
n 1954
components
at TU
Dresden,
Germany
 600 kV 10-stage 800 kV
Marx generator Marx
in operation generator in
laboratory
at the
National
Institute of
Technology,
Durgapur
India.

Optimization
To deliver 5 ns rise time pulses, the Marx generator is
often built into a coaxial wave guide. The spark gaps
are placed as close as possible together for
maximum UV light exchange for minimum jitter. DC
HV comes from underneath, pulsed HV leaves at the
top into the coaxial line. The double line of spheres in
the middle are the spark gaps, all other spheres are
to avoid corona discharge. Blue=water capacitor.
Grey=solid metal. Black= thin wire. The outer
conductor also functions as a vessel, so that the gas
and the pressure can be optimized.
Proper performance depends upon
capacitor selection and the timing of the
discharge. Switching times can be
improved by doping of the electrodes
with radioactive isotopes caesium 137 or
nickel 63, and by orienting the spark gaps
so that ultraviolet light from a firing spark
gap switch illuminates the remaining
open spark gaps.[3] Insulation of the high
voltages produced is often accomplished
by immersing the Marx generator in
transformer oil or a high pressure
dielectric gas such as sulfur hexafluoride
(SF6).

Note that the less resistance there is

between the capacitor and the charging
power supply, the faster it will charge.
Thus, in this design, those closer to the
power supply will charge quicker than
those farther away. If the generator is
allowed to charge long enough, all
capacitors will attain the same voltage.

In the ideal case, the closing of the

switch closest to the charging power
supply applies a voltage 2V to the
second switch. This switch will then
close, applying a voltage 3V to the third
switch. This switch will then close,
resulting in a cascade down the
generator that produces nV at the
generator output (again, only in the ideal
case).
The first switch may be allowed to
spontaneously break down (sometimes
called a self break) during charging if the
absolute timing of the output pulse is
unimportant. However, it is usually
intentionally triggered once all the
capacitors in the Marx bank have
reached full charge, either by reducing
the gap distance, by pulsing an additional
trigger electrode (such as a Trigatron), by
ionising the air in the gap using a pulsed
laser, or by reducing the air pressure
within the gap.

The charging resistors, Rc, need to be

properly sized for both charging and
discharging. They are sometimes
replaced with inductors for improved
efficiency and faster charging. In many
generators the resistors are made from
plastic or glass tubing filled with dilute
copper sulfate solution. These liquid
resistors overcome many of the
problems experienced by more-
conventional solid resistive materials,
which have a tendency to lower their
resistance over time under high voltage
conditions.

Short pulses
The Marx generator is also used to
generate short high-power pulses for
Pockels cells, driving a TEA laser, ignition
of the conventional explosive of a
nuclear weapon, and radar pulses.

Shortness is relative, as the switching

time of even high-speed versions is not
less than 1 ns, and thus many low-power
electronic devices are faster. In the
design of high-speed circuits,
electrodynamics is important, and the
Marx generator supports this insofar as it
uses short thick leads between its
components, but the design is
nevertheless essentially an electrostatic
one. (In electrodynamic terms, when the
first stage breaks down it creates a
spherical electromagnetic wave whose
electric field vector is opposed to the
static high voltage. This moving
electromagnetic field has the wrong
orientation to trigger the next stage, and
may even reach the load; such noise in
front of the edge is undesirable in many
switching applications. If the generator is
inside a tube of (say) 1 m diameter, it
requires around 10 wave reflections for
the field to settle to static conditions,
which restricts pulse leading edge width
to 30 ns or more. Smaller devices are of
course faster.) When the first gap breaks
down, pure electrostatic theory predicts
that the voltage across all stages rises.
However, stages are coupled capacitively
to ground and serially to each other, and
thus each stage encounters a voltage
rise that is increasingly weaker the
further the stage is from the switching
one; the adjacent stage to the switching
one therefore encounters the largest
voltage rise, and thus switches in turn.
As more stages switch, the voltage rise
to the remainder increases, which speeds
up their operation. Thus a voltage rise
fed into the first stage becomes
amplified and steepened at the same
time.

The speed of a switch is determined by

the speed of the charge carriers, which
gets higher with higher voltage, and by
the current available to charge the
inevitable parasitic capacity. In solid-
state avalanche devices, a high voltage
automatically leads to high current.
Because the high voltage is applied only
for a short time, solid-state switches will
not heat up excessively. As
compensation for the higher voltages
encountered, the later stages have to
carry lower charge too. Stage cooling
and capacitor recharging also go well
together.

Stage variants
Avalanche diodes can replace a spark
gap for stage voltages less than 500
volts. The charge carriers easily leave the
electrodes, so no extra ionisation is
needed and jitter is low. The diodes also
have a longer lifetime than spark gaps.

A speedy switching device is an NPN

avalanche transistor fitted with a coil
between base and emitter. The transistor
is initially switched off and about 300
volts exists across its collector-base
junction. This voltage is high enough that
a charge carrier in this region can create
more carriers by impact ionisation, but
the probability is too low to form a proper
avalanche; instead a somewhat noisy
leakage current flows. When the
preceding stage switches, the emitter-
base junction is pushed into forward bias
and the collector-base junction enters full
avalanche mode, so charge carriers
injected into the collector-base region
multiply in a chain reaction. Once the
Marx generator has completely fired,
voltages everywhere drop, each switch
avalanche stops, its matched coil puts its
base-emitter junction into reverse bias,
and the low static field allows remaining
charge carriers to drain out of its
collector-base junction.

Applications
One application is so-called boxcar
switching of a Pockels cell. Four Marx
generators are used, each of the two
electrodes of the Pockels cell being
connected to a positive pulse generator
and a negative pulse generator. Two
generators of opposite polarity, one on
each electrode, are first fired to charge
the Pockels cell into one polarity. This
will also partly charge the other two
generators but not trigger them, because
they have been only partly charged
beforehand. Leakage through the Marx
resistors needs to be compensated by a
small bias current through the generator.
At the trailing edge of the boxcar, the two
other generators are fired to "reverse" the
cell.

Marx generators are used to provide

high-voltage pulses for the testing of
insulation of electrical apparatus such as
large power transformers, or insulators
used for supporting power transmission
lines. Voltages applied may exceed two
million volts for high-voltage apparatus.

See also
ATLAS-I
Cockcroft-Walton generator – a similar
circuit which has the same "ladder"
structure. CW generator produces a
constant DC.
Vector inversion generator A
transmission line device using a
similar charge in parallel discharge in
series approach
 Explosively pumped flux compression
generator – A solution to the dual
problem of creating high current
pulses
Ignition coil
Induction coil
Tesla coil
Transformer – A circuit component
that is analogous to using mechanical
gears to increase torque or speed. Can
convert AC from one voltage and
current, to another. Any increase in
voltage will result in a reduction in
current. The opposite is also true.

References
1. Marx, Erwin (1924). "Versuche über
die Prüfung von Isolatoren mit
Spanningsstößen" [Experiments on
the Testing of Insulators using High
Voltage Pulses]. Elektrotechnische
Zeitschrift (in German). 25: 652–654.
ISSN 0424-0200 . OCLC 5797229 ..
This reference is suspect: the year
1924 and volume 25 do not match;
the year 1924 corresponds to volume
45; volume 25 would be too early for
Marx. Volker Weiss says 1925 and
volume 45 which would also be
wrong. Electrical World
https://books.google.com/books?
id=o3FEAQAAIAAJ&hl=en suggests
 Marx' Flashover testing article was
June 11, 1925.
2. Typical explanation; see, for example,
http://www.kronjaeger.com/hv/hv/sr
c/marx/index.html ; the issue is
more complicated. Another site uses
charging inductors instead of
resistors:
http://hibp.ecse.rpi.edu/~leij/febetro
n/marx.html .
3. E. Kuffel, W. S. Zaengl, J. Kuffel High
voltage engineering: fundamentals,
Newnes, 2000 ISBN 0-7506-3634-3,
pages 63, 70

Further reading
Bauer, G. (June 1, 1968) "A low-
impedance high-voltage nanosecond
pulser", Journal of Scientific
Instruments, London, UK. vol. 1,
pp. 688–689.
Graham et al. (1997) "Compact 400 kV
Marx Generator With Common Switch
Housing", Pulsed Power Conference,
11th Annual Digest of Technical Papers,
vol. 2, pp. 1519–1523.
Ness, R. et al. (1991) "Compact,
Megavolt, Rep-Rated Marx Generators",
IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices,
vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 803–809.
Obara, M. (June 3–5, 1980) "Strip-Line
Multichannel-Surface-Spark-Gap-Type
Marx Generator for Fast Discharge
Lasers", IEEE Conference Record of the
1980 Fourteenth Pulse Power
Modulator Symposium, pp. 201–208.
Shkaruba et al. (May–June 1985)
"Arkad'ev-Mark Generator with
Capacitive Coupling", Instrum Exp Tech
vol. 28, No. 3, part 2, pp. 625–628,
XP002080293.
Sumerville, I. C. (June 11–24, 1989) "A
Simple Compact 1 MV, 4 kJ Marx",
Proceedings of the Pulsed Power
Conference, Monterey, California conf.
7, pp. 744–746, XP000138799.
Turnbull, S. M. (1998) "Development of
a High Voltage, High PRF PFN Marx
 Generator", Conference Record of the
1998 23rd International Power
Modulation Symposium, pp. 213–16.

External links
"Marx Generator ". ecse.rpi.edu. (ed.
explains the Febetron 2020 pulser
experimented within the RPI Plasma
Dynamics Laboratory)
Jochen Kronjaeger, ""Marx generator ".
Jochen's High Voltage Page, 2003.
Jim Lux, "Marx Generators ", High
Voltage Experimenter's Handbook, 3
May 1998.
"The 'Quick & Dirty' Marx generator ".
Mike's Electric Stuff, May 2003.
Retrieved from
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Last edited 5 months ago by Firew…

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