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Gas pressurized closing switches are one of the most important elements in FLTD-based systems. Improving the trigger performance of gas switches is useful for optimizing the output parameters and the reliability of the FLTD. In this paper, the breakdown characteristics of the trigger gap and the overvoltage gap are studied experimentally. The reasons for the different breakdown performance of the two gaps are also investigated. The results show that the breakdown delay of the trigger gap is more influenced by the trigger voltage, while the breakdown delay of the overvoltage gap is more influenced by the working coefficient and always higher than that of the trigger gap. The jitter of the trigger gap is more influenced by the trigger voltage and accounts more than 60% of the total switch jitter, while the jitter of the overvoltage gap is hardly changed with the trigger voltage as well as the working coefficient and maintains less than 1.4 ns. It is proved that the discharging product from the trigger gap can effectively reduce the breakdown delay and jitter of the overvoltage gap. Based on that, the effect and improvement of pre-ionization on the two gaps are also studied. It is concluded that the jitter of the trigger gap reduces obviously when the pre-ionization is added, while the pre-ionization almost has no effect on the jitter of the overvoltage gap. The jitter of the overvoltage gap is about two times higher than the trigger gap in the pre-ionizing switch.

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As one of the most important elements in linear transformer driver (LTD) based systems, the gas pressurized closing switches are required to operate with a very low prefire probability during the DC-charging process to ensure reliable operation and stable output of the whole pulsed power system. The most direct and effective way to control the prefire probability is to select a suitable working coefficient. The study of the development characteristics of the initially generated electrons is useful for optimizing the working coefficient and improving the prefire characteristic of the switches. In this paper an ultraviolet pulsed laser is used to generate initial electrons inside the gap volume. A current measuring system is used to measure the time-dependent current generated by the growth of the initial electrons so as to study the development characteristics of the electrons under different working coefficients. Experimental results show that the development characteristics of the initial electrons are influenced obviously by the working coefficient. With the increase of the working coefficient, the development degree of the electrons increases consequently. At the same times, there is a threshold of working coefficient which produces the effect of ionization on electrons. The range of the threshold has a slow growth but remains close to 65% with the gas pressure increase. When the working coefficient increases further, γ processes are starting to be generated inside the gap volume. In addition, an optimal working coefficient beneficial for improving the prefire characteristic is indicated and further tested.