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The conventional unipolar Marx generator can be employed for bipolar pulsed electric field by adding a high-voltage H-bridge at the load side which necessitates stacked switches. Alternatively, bipolar Marx generator with low-voltage switches can be employed. The existing bipolar Marx generators are typically fed from dc supplies, where polarized capacitors are employed. The capacitance of involved capacitors is selected such that the total energy stored in the generator's capacitors is higher than the bipolar pulse energy. As a result, polarized capacitors with relatively high capacitances are required. In addition, a high number of controlled switches per stage are required (at least four switches per stage). In this paper, a new solid-state bipolar Marx pulse generator with only three controlled switches per stage is proposed. The proposed generator is fed from sinusoidal/square ac voltage and non-polarized capacitors with low capacitance are employed. The proposed bipolar Marx-generator can be used effectively with resistive loads for exponential pulse generation. A detailed illustration of the proposed approach is presented and a discussion, to elucidate the differences between the proposed pulse generator and the other existing ones, are presented. Simulation results for the proposed pulse generator are presented to validate the concept. Finally, experimental results have been obtained from a low-voltage model of the proposed generator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-Voltage pulse generators are commonly used in biotechnology, medicine, industrial applications, food processing and drinking water purification. The dc-dc boost converter has been used before in pulsed applications for its ability to amplify a relatively low input dc voltage to a high-voltage output. A high-voltage solid-state chopping switch is then used to chop the generated high output voltage. In this work, a boost-converter based ringing circuit with high voltage gain is proposed for water treatment applications. The basic concept of the proposed approach depends on operating the boost converter under discontinuous current conduction. With the proposed approach, the chopping high-voltage switch at the output stage is eliminated, which positively affects the system cost and efficiency. A full-design of the circuit and passive components is presented to ensure that the desired pulse specifications are achieved. The proposed approach has been validated using simulation and experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]