Pulsed Power - Overview

The Advanced Conversion annular form factor film capacitor offers significant advantages for pulsed power applications where the capacitor is charged to a DC voltage and then discharged in a load. The capacitor limitations for such applications are typically the peak current in the end connections and RMS current heating in the case of a high repetition rate. Depending on life requirements there will be a limiting Ampere per unit length of film based on the peak current which will cause end connection damage. Our annular form factor significantly reduces the Ampere per unit length stress and enables peak current on the order of 100kA to be extracted from dry construction metalized film windings. Traditionally, foil electrodes have been necessary with small end connection area to achieve peak currents of this magnitude. The annular form factor similarly improves the capacitor RMS current capability for fast repetition rates given the lower ESR and lower thermal resistance to the end connections.

Advanced Conversion offers unique options for the segmentation of the film metallization to improve performance. This can be combined with the use of light metal to safely increase voltage stress while maintaining a low ESR due to the small height to diameter ratio of the winding. Multi-web winding capabilities allow placing film layers in series to achieve higher operating voltages. We can wind our capacitors on very large hollow cores (up to 8”) with diameters out to 14” which offers unique opportunities for customers to utilize the core for return current feeds to make very low inductance circuits. Similarly, other components can be deployed in the capacitor core to minimize space requirements and the core can also be used to achieve a very robust mounting system. We manufacture a wide variety of standard and specialty pulse capacitors utilized for medical, R&D, and military applications. In many cases, customers utilize standard “building block” capacitors in series/parallel arrays to achieve their specific voltage, capacitance, and current requirements.

Please download our Key Pulse Capacitor Technology Points presentation (pdf link) for more information.

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