Experimental study on the characteristics of emiconductor opening switch

An experimental setup is developed to measure the characteristics of semiconductor opening switch (SOS). The parameters, such as interruption impedance, current interruption time, voltage gain, pulse duration and energy transfer efficiency, are studied experimentally. The experimental results show that forward pumping time and reverse pumping time are important parameters for semiconductor opening switches. The influences of forward pumping time and reverse pumping time on interruption time, voltage gain, and energy transfer efficiency are obtained. In the interruption process, the impedance variation is divided into three phases: that is rapid increasing phase, slow change phase and completely interruption phase.