Topologies for Battery Fed Low Power High Voltage Capacitor Charging Circuits

Ion mass analyser is an analytical space instrument employed to characterise the spatial ions. The guiding plates of the ion mass analyser require high voltage drive in the range of 0-5kV and is powered by a low voltage battery source. Flyback converter is widely employed for high voltage low power charging applications, fed from low voltage input source. Implementation of conventional flyback converter topology demand semiconductors of high voltage blocking capability greater than 5 kV to ensure 0-5kV charging and discharging process. Considering the limited commercial availability of high voltage active semiconductors at the operated low power level (<5W), two feasible flyback converter approaches namely, (1) Modular structure based high voltage low power flyback converter (2) Single primary multiple secondary flyback transformer based high voltage low power flyback converter, which employs semiconductors of low voltage rating to accomplish 0- 5kV charging is discussed in this paper. High voltage converter behaviour and features of the two different approaches are studied through simulation results. An experimental prototype depicting modular structure based high voltage low power flyback converter is implemented to achieve 0-5kV charging from 12 V input source.