A Novel Solid State Pulsed Power Module for Excimer Laser

For effective excimer laser pumping high voltage pulses with the pulse duration of 100 ns and energies from a fraction of joules to some 10 joules are necessary. For the generation of these pulses traditionally Thyratron circuits are used. The limited lifetime and repetition rates of such a device does not fulfil not the requirements of a modern excimer laser. State of the art is a solid state circuit with IGBT switches, high voltage pulse transformer and pulse compression networks. Due to the many stages, complexity is high and efficiency is moderate. To overcome this limitation a new solid state circuit for excimer laser pumping is developed. The circuit works without magnetic pulse compression. The switch is made by a stack of "off the self" MOSFETs and SiC diodes. In the presentation the general design and its calculation, diode and switch qualification and test results are presented.