The Nuts and Bolts of

High Power Pulse Generators

by David A. Brown and the Berkeley Nucleonics team

Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation

Second Edition · 2026

A Message from the President

Pulsed power sits at a strange intersection: the physics is mature, but the engineering keeps surprising us. When we brought together the Berkeley Nucleonics precision-timing heritage and the Directed Energy, Inc. high-voltage product line, we realized there was no single resource that connected the theory of store-slowly-release-fast to the practical decisions an engineer faces at the bench. Spark gap or SiC MOSFET? Marx topology or Blumlein? How do you measure a 10 kV, 10 ns edge without lying to yourself? That gap is what this book fills. It is the documentation we wished we had had a decade ago.

We are genuinely excited about where pulsed power is going. Wide-bandgap semiconductors have unlocked repetition rates and pulse fidelities that were not commercially realistic five years ago. The application space, from bioelectrics and directed energy to accelerator systems and plasma research, is expanding fast. BNC intends to be at the center of that expansion, and this book is part of how we get there with you. We hope it earns a permanent spot near your bench.

David Brown
President, Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation

Why a Second Edition, and Why Now

The first edition went out before wide-bandgap switching had really settled into production benches. Since then, silicon carbide and gallium nitride parts have moved from promising samples to parts you can actually design around, and that has pulled rise times shorter and repetition rates higher than most of the first edition assumed. The chapters on switch technologies and circuit topologies needed a fresh pass to keep up.

The application side has shifted too. Bioelectrics, plasma research, directed energy, and accelerator work are all reaching for faster edges and cleaner pulses, and more of that work now lands on engineers who did not come up through high-voltage labs. This edition is written with them in mind: fewer assumptions, more of the practical judgment that used to live only in senior heads. The time to update was now, while the ground is still moving.

Foreword

Energy is patient. A capacitor bank can charge over an hour, then release every joule in a hundred nanoseconds, multiplying instantaneous power by a factor that strains ordinary intuition. That single idea, store slowly, release fast, underpins every machine in this book: the laboratory Marx generator, the half-bridge MOSFET pulser, the radar modulator, the electroporation system, the inertial-confinement experiment. The physics is old. The engineering, particularly in the last decade since silicon carbide and gallium nitride devices crossed the commercial threshold, is changing faster than at any point since the thyratron gave way to the transistor.

Berkeley Nucleonics has been building precision pulse and signal instruments since 1963. The acquisition of the Directed Energy, Inc. product line in 2021 brought high-voltage and high-current pulsers into a single portfolio, and with that came a duty to document what we have learned across both lineages. This book is that documentation: a field guide for the engineer who needs to select, specify, set up, or troubleshoot a high-power pulse generator, written by practitioners who work with these instruments every day. We are glad to share it.

The Berkeley Nucleonics Team

How to Read This Book

New to pulsed power? Read Chapters 1 through 4 in order. Chapter 1 gives the history. Chapter 2 sets the vocabulary: rise time, droop, pulse width, PFN impedance. Chapter 3 maps the failure modes that catch newcomers, so read it before you touch hardware. Chapter 4 is high-voltage safety. It is not optional.

Experienced engineers can jump to the problem at hand. Chapter 5 surveys switches, from spark gaps and thyratrons to SiC MOSFETs and GaN. Chapter 6 develops topologies: Marx, Blumlein, hard-tube and line-type modulators, half- and full-bridge, inductive adders. Chapter 7 covers diagnostics and measurement. Chapter 8 handles system integration and EMC. Chapter 9 walks the BNC-DEI product family. Chapter 10 maps applications. Chapter 11 looks ahead.

Every chapter ends with a quiz. Appendix A is the glossary, Appendix B the equations, Appendix C the vendor and standards index, Appendix D the contributor notes and answer key. Read what you need. Mark it up.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2026 Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission, except brief quotations in reviews. The Nuts and Bolts of High Power Pulse Generators, Second Edition, 2026. Published by Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation, San Rafael, California. BNC and the Berkeley Nucleonics logo are trademarks of Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation; specifications are subject to change, consult the current datasheet for authoritative figures.

Front Matter

Chapters