Preliminary experimental results on water breakdown in tens nanoseconds region

Deionized water is a good dielectric material. In this paper, preliminary investigations are carried out on water breakdown in tens nanoseconds region via a switch with “point-plane” electrodes. The switch is set up on the output port of a wave erection Marx generator, which can deliver a minus high voltage pulse with an amplitude of 0∼300 kV, and a pulse width of 40∼50 ns to a matched load. According to the experimental results, the breakdown electric field is calculated to be about 1.2 MV/cm by Martin's formula. A circuit model for the whole system is built utilizing PSpice software, and the simulation results agree with the experimental ones basically.