Electronic – High voltage to low voltage in ps/nanosecond time (Zener/opamp?)

high frequencyhigh speedhigh voltageoperational-amplifierzener

So I have a signal that goes from 0 to ~800volts in 30ns. I would like to use this signal to trigger a camera (input impedance of 50ohm) which takes a max of 10 volts and requires the rise time to be 1ns for this 10 volts.
I tried a 10 volt zener diode which works… but delays the signal a lot (not sure why) so I get 10 volts in 8ns instead of 1ns. [People said zeners are made for DC and not so much for high frequencies, so maybe thats why]

I then thought of using attenuators to make the signal go from 0 to 10 volts (instead of 800V) in 30ns then use an opamp as a comparator with a 10volt DC battery connected to +Vs and Ref, Vin-, -Vs connected to the negative side of the battery. (and ofc the main signal going to Vin+)
Since different opamps got different operating frequencies and slew rates I got this one: THS3491IDDAT
Which got a 320 MHz operating frequency and 8 kV/us slew rate

circuit used

However, I was getting weird results that I wasnt able to understand and shortly after multiple legs of the op amp broke, so I wasn't able to capture the output signal

Here is the input signal which is attenuated using 38dB (div 80) [time scale is 10ns/div and voltage scale is 10v/div

input signal

Was I doing something wrong? or is there an easier circuit to use? Any recommendation for other opamps that are easy to handle? (this one was tiny)

The source is a Rogowski coil with a resistance of 4ohm and inductance of 1.4e-7 H. (1 turn coil).

Thanks in advance.

Best Answer

Try this

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab