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A high-voltage pulse-slicer unit with variable pulse duration has been developed and integrated with a 7 MeV linear electron accelerator (LINAC) for pulse radiolysis investigation. The pulse-slicer unit provides switching voltage from 1 kV to 10 kV with rise time better than 5 ns. Two MOSFET based 10 kV switches were configured in differential mode to get variable duration pulses. The high-voltage pulse has been applied to the deflecting plates of the LINAC for slicing of electron beam of 2 μs duration. The duration of the electron beam has been varied from 30 ns to 2 μs with the optimized pulse amplitude of 7 kV to get corresponding radiation doses from 6 Gy to 167 Gy.

A high-voltage pulse generator based on a self-matched transmission line with variable pulse amplitude and duration is developed. Two avalanche transistor stacks are used as switches. The pulse width is varied by adjusting the delay in triggering two switches whereas amplitude is adjusted by adjusting load resistance. A pulse with amplitude of 800 V to 3.8 kV and width of 5 ns to 38 ns can be obtained using this circuit.

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A large aperture disc amplifier has been designed, set-up and characterized for its performance on small signal gain, spatial variation of gain, and thermal recovery time. This amplifier, consisting of three elliptical Nd: phosphate glass discs of size 214 × 114 × 20 mm mounted at Brewster angle and pumped by ten xenon filled flash lamps of 600 mm arc length, provided a small signal gain of 6 at electrical pump energy of 36 kJ (in a pulse of 450 μs) using an in-house developed dual-polarity capacitor bank based power supply. It was coupled to a high power Nd: phosphate glass laser chain and a maximum output pulse energy exceeding 100 J in a 1·5 ns (FWHM) pulse has been measured. A dry nitrogen gas based cooling system was developed for cooling the glass discs with a thermal recovery time of ∼ 20 minutes.