Megahertz high voltage pulse generator

suitable for capacitive load

Cite as: AIP Advances 7, 115210 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5006827
Submitted: 28 September 2017 . Accepted: 03 November 2017 . Published Online: 13 November 2017

Yu Xu , Wei Chen, Hao Liang, Yu-Huai Li, Fu-Tian Liang , Qi Shen, Sheng-Kai Liao , and Cheng-
Zhi Peng

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AIP Advances 7, 115210 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5006827 7, 115210

© 2017 Author(s).
 AIP ADVANCES 7, 115210 (2017)

Megahertz high voltage pulse generator

suitable for capacitive load
Yu Xu,1,2,3 Wei Chen,1,3 Hao Liang,1,3 Yu-Huai Li,1,2 Fu-Tian Liang,1,2,3
Qi Shen,1,2 Sheng-Kai Liao,1,2,a and Cheng-Zhi Peng1,2
1 Department of Modern Physics and Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences
at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
2 Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Center for Excellence and Synergetic Innovation Center

in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China,
Shanghai 201315, China
3 State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, University of Science

and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China

(Received 28 September 2017; accepted 3 November 2017; published online 10 November 2017)

A high voltage pulse generator is presented to drive Pockels cell. The Pockels cell
behaves like a capacitor which slows the rise/fall time of the pulse and restrains the
repetition rate of the generator. To drive the Pockels cell applied in quantum communi-
cation system, it requires about 1 MHz repetition rate with the rise/fall time of the pulse
less than 50 ns, adjustable amplitude up to 800 V and an adjustable duration. With
the assistance of self-designed transformers, the circuits is simplified that a pair of
high current radio frequency (RF) MOSFET drivers are employed to switch the power
MOSFETs at a high speed, and the power MOSFETs shape the final output pulse
with the requirements. From the tests, the generator can produce 800 V square pulses
continously at 1 MHz rate with 46 ns in risetime and 31 ns in falltime when driving a
51 pF capacitive load. And the generator is now used to drive Pockels cell for encod-
ing the polarization of photons. © 2017 Author(s). All article content, except where
otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5006827

I. INTRODUCTION
Linear electro-optic effect, known as the Pockels effect, is widely used for modulating amplitude,
polarization or phase of photons. Owing to the ultra-fast response time, Pockels cells play critical
roles in quantum information experiments, such as selecting measurement bases in quantum key
distribution and quantum entanglement distribution,1–3 arranging propagating path of pulses,4,5 or
performing Q-swishing in laser cavities.6 For such applications, the rise/fall time and the repetition
rate become key parameters for Pockels cells. Generally, higher repetition rate is strongly desired for
quantum information experiments, as higher repetition rate corresponds to higher trial rate.
A Pockels cell is usually constituted of one or two electro-optic crystals, and modulated by an
external electric field. For common electro-optic crystals such as KDP, KTP or BBO, the external
electric field needs to be at the order of 100 kV/m to accumulate π-phase retardation per 100 millime-
ters. Achieving the high voltage together with the demands of a fast rise/fall time and high repetition
rate is the main goal and also the difficulty when building drivers for Pockels cells for quantum
information experiments.
Further more, the Pockels cell behaves like a capacitor, so the high voltage pulse generator
specifically designed for a Pockels cell actually realizes fast charging and discharging of a capacitive
load, which slows the rise/fall time of the pulse, releases extra heat and finally turns out to be one of
the bottlenecks when raising the repetition rate.

a
skliao@ustc.edu.cn

2158-3226/2017/7(11)/115210/6 7, 115210-1 © Author(s) 2017

115210-2 Xu et al. AIP Advances 7, 115210 (2017)

As an instrument that helps encode the polarization of the photon, regularly obtainable multi-
kilohertz repetition rate Pockels cell drivers could not meet the requirements in the high trial rate
quantum information experiments anymore. A higher repetition rate voltage square pulse generator
with variable duration and amplitude is eagerly desired. And several key parameters need to be
satisfied for this generator: pulse repetition rate over 1 MHz, voltage adjustable from 0 V to over
800 V, rise/fall time less than 50 ns, and driven capacitive load over 50 pF.
There are three main ways to realize a high voltage pulse generator, from the study. The first way
is to use the vacuum tubes such as the krytron, thyratron, or planar triode to generate high voltage
pulses.7 Nanosecond rise/fall time could be achieved with such method. However, the devices are
bulky and the circuit is complicated. The second way is based on avalanche transistor stack topology
and avalanche Marx stack topology.8 Although this method can generate high voltage pulses with
rise time and fall time in the scale of nanoseconds or sub-nanoseconds, the repetition rate of up to
10 KHz is still relatively low.9,10
With the development of the semiconductor technologies, semiconductor devices, such as
power MOSFET and the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) have very high potential for
applications in generating high repetition rate, and high voltage pulses.11 They have significant
advantages over traditional vacuum tubes and avalanche transistors in performance, cost, and
drive complexity. The push-pull configuration based on power MOSFET have both nanosecond
rise and fall times,12,13 this generator is adapted for capacitive load and has a powerful driv-
ing capability for the Pockels cell, but the repetiton rate is still low or not mentioned in these
works.
In this paper, we designed a high voltage pulse generator that provides high voltage pulses
with a variable amplitude from 0 to 800 V that works at a repetition rate of 1 MHz when driving
a capacitive load equivalent to 51 pF. The widths of the high voltage pulses are adjustable from
300 ns to 700 ns with 46 ns rise time and 31 ns fall time. The generator is specifically designed for
capacitive load, and it also has wide application prospects where high voltage pulse generators is
demanded.

II. THE CIRCUITS

As illustrated in Fig. 1, the high voltage pulse generator contains two main parts: a gate driver
circuit triggered by external input, and a pulse generator circuit with a high voltage power sup-
ply. The high voltage pulse generator circuit is used to generate high voltage pulses with fall time

FIG. 1. Schematic diagram of high voltage generator circuit.

115210-3 Xu et al. AIP Advances 7, 115210 (2017)

and rise time in ten-nanoseconds, which is achieved by quickly turning on and off the two MOSFETs
Q1 and Q2 in sequence. There is parasitic or stray capacitances C gs between gate (G) and source (S),
C gd between gate (G) and drain (D), and the input equivalent capacitance C ISS = C gd + C gs . When
the C ISS is charged or discharged to gate threshold voltage V th , the power MOSFETs turn on or off.
Higher current is provided, more quickly the power MOSFETs switch. Thus, a gate driver circuit with
high driving ability is employed to generate a pair of short trigger signals to achieve quick switching
of the power MOSFETs Q1 and Q2.
In the following, two main parts of the design will be discussed in detail.
A. Gate driver circuit
The gate driver circuit mainly consists of two RF MOSFET drivers U1(2) and corresponding
AC coupling circuits. The high current RF MOSFET drivers IXRFD630 is chosen because it can
deliver 30 A of peak current which ensures the C ISS can be charged to V th in nanoseconds and turn on
the power MOSFET Q1(2). The gate driver circuit requires 15 V DC power supply for IXRFD630.
To supply instantaneous high current and filter out high frequency noise, three different package
capacitors are located at the VCC pins of U1 and U2. Different packages of capacitors bring different
parasitic inductances and lead to different impedance and ESR(equivalent series resistance) curves
corresponding to frequencies.14 When a combination of different ESR curves applied in the filtering
net, better filtering performance may be achieved.
The output pin of U1 is directly connected to AC coupling capacitance C1 and resistance R5.
Because the primary isolation transformer T1 can be equivalently regarded as an inductor L1,
the H-trigger signals, which turns on the power MOSFET Q1, will pass through an RLC circuit.
The RLC circuit is expected to operate
√ in over-damped condition and the oscillation is highly
suppressed, which requires R5 ≥ 2 L1/C1. In the experiment, the value of the induction L1 and
the coupling capacitor C1 is about 10 uH and 100 nF, and the over-damped condition requires
R5 ≥ 20Ω.
B. Pulse generator circuit
The pulse generator circuit is the key part of the system, where the push-pull configuration is intro-
duced to enhance the output driving ability and generate a high voltage pulse with ten-nanoseconds
scale rise/fall time. The pulse generator circuit consists of three main parts: two pulse isolation
transformers, a push-pull configuration circuit and the high voltage power supply.
The isolation transformer is a widely-used and effective tool in achieving current isolation.
Because the high side power MOSFET Q1 of the push pull configuration is floating, a high rep-
etition pulse isolation transformer is applied to achieve galvanic isolation between Q1 and the
output of the gate drive circuit. However, the commercial isolated gate drivers (eg. ADUM1233,
IX6R11) usually fail to meet the requirement in insulation voltage (800 V ), while the transformer
chips (eg. PA2531NL, PA2621INL) usually fail to meet the requirement in repetition rate (over
1 MHz).
In order to work through the challenge of both high insulation voltage and high repetition rate.
We designed our own isolation transformers to meet the requirement of both high insulation voltage
and high repetition rate. The NiZn (Nickel Zinc) family of ferrites is characterized by permeabilities
µ ≤ 2500, high transmission line bandwidth, and high practical frequency. A ring-shaped NiZn ferrite
was chosen as the core of the transformer. The primary and secondary windings whose break down
voltage reaches 10 kV are braided in alternate directions around the ring-shaped core, and the turns
ratio is 1:1.
The push-pull configuration circuit mainly contains two FAIRCHILED power MOSFETs
FQA8N100C denoted by Q1 and Q2, whose breakdown voltage is 1000 V, with corresponded con-
tinuous drain current being 8 A and RDS(on) being 1.45 Ω. The input high voltage power supply
is connected to the drain of Q1. The gate of Q1 is floating above ground and connected to the
secondary of T1 through the damping resistor R3. The drain of Q2 is connected with the source
of Q1, and the source of Q2 is connected to the ground. Resistor R4 and R3 with resistance 3.3Ω
are used to dampen the gate drive ringing. The trigger timing diagram and the waveform of output
high voltage pulse are shown in Fig. 2. When the H-trigger signal arrives at the gate terminal of the
115210-4 Xu et al. AIP Advances 7, 115210 (2017)

FIG. 2. The trigger timing diagram and the output high voltage pulse.

high side power MOSFET Q1, Q1 is turned on and charges the capacitive load to 800 V in 46 ns.
Once the L-trigger signal arrives at the gate of the low side power MOSFET Q2, Q2 turns on, the
drain of the Q2 is grounded and the capacitive Pockels cell is discharged to 0 V in 31 ns through
Q2. The zener diode D1 is used to guarantee that the gate-source voltage of MOSFET does not
exceed limitation. The resistor R6(680Ω) is to provide a low impedance channel to release the gate
charge.
A high voltage power supply is used to provide high voltage up to 1 kV and can provide current
up to 500 mA for the pulse generator circuit. In fact, a traditional high voltage power supply cannot
provide sufficient instantaneous current. In this paper, a capacitor group consisting of ten high voltage
ceramic capacitors with capacitance 10nF is utilized, which makes it possible to provide large enough
instantaneous current for the pulse generator circuit. Because of the properties like fast rise-fall time,
high repetition rate, and high instantaneous current, the following factors, such as ground splitting,
high voltage trace width and components layouts should all be taken into careful consideration
for electromagnetic interference (EMI) suppression and signal integrity. In the design, the PCB is
partitioned into a drivers section and a pulse generator section, thus the ground is correspondingly
split into two parts, which are connected together by the self-designed transformer, to prevent the
EMI from influencing the drivers section.

III. TESTS
We test the high voltage pulse generator circuit loading with a 51 pF capacitor which is exactly
the value of the equivalent capacitive load of the Pockels cell M350-50 from ConOptics. As illustrated
in Fig. 3, the test setup is composed of 5 main instruments, including a megahertz high voltage pulse
generator (a), an arbitrary generators AFG3252 (b) to provides one pair of TTL signals at repetition
rate of 1 MHz in stead of the FPGA in the practical cases, a water circulation system (c) to cool
the power MOSFETs and the RF MOSFET drivers, a Tektronix DPO4104 oscilloscope (d) to record
the high voltage pulse waveform, and a power supply DH1722A-6 (e) to provide high voltage. The
waveform of the output high voltage pulse is shown in Fig. 4. The 10%  90% fall time is about
31 ns and the rise time is 46 ns, the amplitude of the high voltage pulses is 800 V and the repetition
rate is 1 MHz.

FIG. 3. The diagram of the test setup.

115210-5 Xu et al. AIP Advances 7, 115210 (2017)

FIG. 4. Output voltage waveform of the push pull circuit.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the push pull configuration circuit is applied to the design of a high voltage pulse
generator which is suitable for capacitive load. The high voltage pulse generator was designed and
tested. All of the requirements, pulse repetition rate over 1 MHz, voltage adjustable from 0 V to
800 V, rise/fall time less than 50 ns, and driven capacitive load over 50 pF, are successfully met.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS) Center for Excellence
and Synergetic Innovation Center in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, Shanghai Branch,
University of Science and Technology of China, by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (under grant no.11405172), by CAS Key Technology Talent Program, by Shanghai Sailing
Program.
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