INITIAL ANODE OPTIMIZATION FOR A
COMPACT SEALED TUBE VIRCATOR
J. Walterξ, J. Vara, C. Lynn, J. Dickens, A. Neuber, M. Kristiansen
Center for Pulsed Power and Power Electronics
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas Tech University
Box 43102
Lubbock, Texas, USA
Abstract
During the development and optimization of a compact
sealed tube virtual cathode oscillator (vircator) at Texas
Tech University, it has become apparent that processes at
the anode have a significant impact on tube performance.
The impact of the high energy, high current density (100-
200 A/cm2 or higher) beam on the anode will cause
outgassing, plasma production, and anode melting and
material ejection. The emitted material expands,
eventually impacting the anode transparency and
(combined with the plasma formed at the cathode)
shorting out the anode-cathode gap. This expansion limits
the maximum radiated pulse width, and can also limit the
peak output power. The residual evolved gas also
negatively impacts the maximum repetition rate of the
tube.
An effort is underway to study the thermal behavior,
gases evolved, and transparency versus time for different
vircator anode materials and material treatments. Several
different anode materials are under investigation,
including stainless steel, copper tungsten, tantalum,
nickel, and molybdenum. The effect of different
treatments on the anodes before tube assembly is also
being studied. The gases that are evolved during operation
have been characterized utilizing pressure and residual
gas analyzer measurements. The pre-shot background
pressure in the tube is in the ultra-high vacuum range (10-8
to 10-9 Torr), and the vircator is not pumped on during
firing. The data collected for the different materials is
presented.
I. INTRODUCTION
Vircator high power microwave (HPM) sources are
simple and robust, making them useful for a variety of
compact, fieldable HPM systems. A basic vircator
consists of two electrodes (anode and cathode) in a high
vacuum. When a high voltage pulse is applied, electrons
emitted from the cathode are accelerated toward the
anode. The anode consists of a foil or screen with some
transparency to the electrons. The interaction of the
ξ
email: john.walter@ttu.edu
978-1-4577-0631-8/12/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
electrons that pass through the anode with the fields in the
housing creates microwave frequency oscillations. A
description of vircator sources can be found in [1].
Due to the imperfect transparency of practical anodes,
the electron beam interacts with the anode surface. The
impact of the high energy (100’s of keV), high current
density (often greater than 100 A/cm2) beam on the anode
causes outgassing, plasma production, melting, and even
anode material ejection. The gas and solid material
expanding from the anode, along with material expanding
from the cathode, eventually close the anode-cathode gap,
thus limiting the maximum radiated pulse width and peak
output power. The emitted gases also limit the maximum
possible repetition rate. A description of some of the
processes occurring at the anode can be found in [2].
An effort is underway at Texas Tech University (TTU)
to study the thermal behavior, gases evolved, and
transparency versus time for different vircator anode
materials, material treatments, and geometries. To date,
this effort consists of measurements on the evolved gases
and some thermal evaluation. The initial experimental
setup for this effort was described in [3], and most of the
results to date are described in [4].
II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
A compact sealed-tube vircator under development at
Texas Tech University is described in [5]. This device is a
triode-geometry vircator, in which the anode is pulsed and
the cathode is grounded to the housing. Figure 1 shows a
drawing of the device and a picture of it mounted to the
experiment. To achieve operating pressures down to 10-9
Torr, ultra-high vacuum compatible materials are used in
the tube construction and it is baked out under vacuum
before use. For single shot operation, the vircator can be
operated in sealed mode, with no vacuum maintenance
pumping required. For multiple shot operation, an ion
pump is integrated into the tube to pump out the gas
evolved during each shot. The vircator is contained in a
six inch diameter stainless steel housing. It uses a
commercial glass output window and a slightly custom
version of a commercial high-voltage feedthrough with a
ceramic insulator.
Figure 1. The sealed-tube triode-geometry vircator
drawing (top) and mounted to the Marx generator with
RGA attached (bottom)
The cathode used in these tests was a 3 inch diameter
aluminum disc with grooves mechanically milled into the
face, forming a 2 inch diameter emission area. The edges
of the cathode were machined with a Bruce profile to
limit unwanted emission. The anodes used were each
machined out of a solid piece of material, with a 3.75 inch
overall diameter and 3.25 inch screen diameter. The
anode holes are 0.125 inch diameter with a transparency
of about 70%. Figure 2 shows a typical anode and
cathode. The anode-cathode gap was fixed at 8 mm
throughout this work.
An Extorr XT100 residual gas analyzer (RGA) was
used to measure the quantity and composition of the gases
evolved during firing. This quadrupole RGA will measure
the partial pressure of gases from 1 to 100 amu to below
10-11 Torr. [6] With its control electronics enclosure
removed, the sensor head is bakeable to 300 °C. The
sensor head additionally contains integrated Pirani and ion
pressure gauges that allow the measurement of the
pressure in the vircator volume (and, knowing the
contained volume, the quantity of gas) [3].
Figure 2. Cathode and anode
The pulsed power driver used for testing is an eight-
stage oil-insulated Marx generator using 100 nF plastic-
case Maxwell capacitors rated at 75 kV, and commercial
spark gap switches. For these experiments, the capacitors
were charged to 40kV. An overhead view into the Marx
oil tank is shown in Figure 3. The drive voltage into the
vircator was typically between 100 and 150 kV after
cathode turn-on, with drive currents ranging up to 20 kA
at gap closure.
Figure 3. Marx generator (top-view into oil tank)
For the gas evolution testing, the vircator was operated
in sealed mode with the ion pump turned off. To avoid
damage to the sensitive electronics, the RGA control box
was disconnected before each shot. After a shot, the
control box was reconnected, and the pressure gauges in
the RGA were then used to measure the quantity of gas
evolved. Each shot would increase the pressure in the tube
substantially; however, the pressure would immediately
begin to fall due to adsorption of the gases onto the tube
surfaces. Due to the limitations of the test setup, the peak
of the pressure increase could not be measured. However,
to provide useful relative measurements, the pressure was
measured at approximately the same length of time after
every shot. The RGA was also used to measure the gas
composition. Once the measurements were completed, the
ion pump was then turned on. When the volume was
pumped long enough that the pressure remained at the
baseline pressure with the pump off (a process that could
take up to a few days), the next shot was taken.
Table 1. Anode materials tested to date

Material Content Density Thermal Specific Melting Point

(kg/m3) Conductivity Heat (deg C)
(W/m*K) (J/kg*K)
Stainless Steel 70% Fe, 18% Cr, 8000 16.2 500 1454
304 8% Ni
Copper Tungsten 55% W, 45% Cu 12600 240 251 3240
Tantalum 99.95% Ta 16700 54.4 140 3017
Nickel 201 99% Ni 8890 90 444 1453
Molybdenum 99.95% Mo 10200 115 260 2617
OFHC Copper 99.99% Cu 8910 387 385 1084

An additional diagnostic used on the system was an breakdown, due to the deposition of anode material on the
open-shutter camera, used to take time-integrated images ceramic insulator.
of the discharge process. A standard consumer SLR
camera was used, with a long focal length lens to allow

Number of gas molecules evolved per shot

placement of the camera far enough from the vircator that
it was not affected by the experiment. The camera shutter
1E17
was manually controlled, with an open time of
approximately 10 seconds. CuW
Six different anode materials have been tested. The six Ta
materials, with some relevant material properties, are 1E16 Cu
shown in Table 1. Each anode was CNC machined from a
single piece of material. The machining process was kept
as similar as possible for each material. Each anode was
cleaned with isopropyl alcohol before assembly. To 1E15
measure the baseline performance, no other pre-treatment
was applied for the initial measurements. A later test
series used a nickel anode that had been cleaned 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
thoroughly in a mild acid solution, rinsed in deionized shot number
water, and baked at 700 °C in a vacuum oven for two days Figure 4. Total quantity of gas evolved per shot for
before tube assembly. copper tungsten, tantalum, and copper anodes

Figure 5 shows the quantity of gas evolved per shot for

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Initial evolved gas composition and quantity results for
the stainless steel anode were reported in [3]. Building on
that work, measurements were made with each of the five
other materials. In all of the cases, the measured gas
composition was typical of the outgassing from clean
systems, containing gases such as hydrogen, methane,
carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide.
For each of the shots, the total number of gas molecules
was calculated from the measured pressure using the ideal
gas law. Figures 4 and 5 show results for the total quantity
of gas evolved for each test shot for the six materials
tested. The amount of gas on the first shot was similar for
all of the materials. Figure 4 shows the quantity of gas
evolved for each shot for the copper tungsten, tantalum,
and OFHC copper anodes. For these materials, the
amount of gas per shot was fairly constant over the
testing. The total number of shots for each of these
materials was limited by high voltage feedthrough
the other materials tested: stainless steel, nickel, and
molybdenum. These materials all showed a decrease in
the amount of gas produced over the first several shots,
approximately leveling out to a steady state after about 10
shots. These materials did not have a problem with
deposition on the insulator.
The gas evolution results for the pre-treated nickel
anode are also shown in Figure 5. The initial post-shot
pressure for this anode was almost an order of magnitude
lower than with the other anodes; however, the pressure
that was reached after multiple conditioning shots was of
the same order as with the non-treated nickel and
molybdenum anodes.
The open-shutter pictures taken during the testing also
showed variation between the materials. Figure 6 shows
these images for copper tungsten and tantalum, while
figure 7 shows the images for the stainless steel and
nickel, with molybdenum shown in figure 8. These
images are all from late in each of the test series shown in
figures 4 and 5. No images were captured for the OFHC
copper anode. The images show that the light emission
was brighter and more uniform in the copper tungsten and
tantalum shots, which is consistent with the data showing
more gas production (and therefore, more plasma
production) in these shots. The images also show very
non-uniform plasma production with the other anodes.
Future experiments will use time-resolved imaging to
determine if the uniformity changes during the pulse
duration.
Figure 8. Open-shutter image taken with the
molybdenum anode
Number of gas molecules evolved per shot

SS
Ni
Mo IV. SUMMARY AND CONTINUING
1E17
pre-treated Ni
WORK
The amount of gas produced during firing was
1E16 characterized for six different materials in a compact
sealed-tube vircator. Nickel and molybdenum anodes
produced the least amount of gas per shot. Work is
continuing with the best materials (nickel and
1E15 molybdenum), investigating the effects of different
treatments to the material. Modeling is also being done to
study the thermal behavior of the materials under the
0 5 10 15 20 25 electron beam impact.
shot number
Figure 5. Total quantity of gas evolved per shot for
stainless steel, nickel, molybdenum, and the pre-treated V. REFERENCES
nickel.
[1] J. Benford, J, Swegle, and E. Schamiloglu, High
Power Microwaves. Taylor & Francis, NY, 2007, pp. 436-
458.

[2] G. A. Mesyats, Cathode Phenomena in a Vacuum

Discharge: The Breakdown, the Spark and the Arc, Nauka
Publishers, Moscow, 2000, pp. 238-258.

[3] J. Vara, J. Walter, S. Holt, and J. Dickens, “Gas

Evolution Measurements in a Sealed Vircator Tube,”
Figure 6. Open-shutter images with the copper tungsten Proc. of the 2010 IEEE International Power Modulator
(left) and tantalum anodes (right) and High Voltage Conference, May 23-27, 2010. Atlanta,
GA.

[4] J. Vara, Anode Material Testing in a Vacuum Diode,

Master’s Thesis, Texas Tech University, May 2011.

[5] J. Walter, J. Dickens, and M. Kristiansen,

“Performance of a compact triode vircator and Marx
generator system”, Proceedings of the 17th IEEE
International Pulsed Power Conference, pg. 133, 2009.

[6] Extorr, Inc. “Extorr XT Series RGA Instruction

Figure 7. Open-shutter images with the stainless steel Manual,” Rev 090629, 2009.
(left) and nickel anodes (right)