Electronic – Practical way to generate 1500V

flybacktransformervoltage

Designing the power supply for an radiation detector, need to supply up to 1500V at 2 mA from mains (170 Vdc).

I've largely considered a flyback converter, but cannot find a flyback transformer with a gain of N=~16 (for a gain of 8 at 50% duty cycle) rated for 1500V at the output winding.

Looked into charge pumps/voltage multipliers some but not in depth yet.

Also just recently learned about CCFL inverter transformers, but still need some time to understand them better.

This project requires a small size and weight, so using a large transformer is not preferred.

What are other ways to step up voltage which I may look into?

Best Answer

Try researching Geiger counter power supplies. They don't produce 1500 volts but they do lend themselves for modification such as this design: -

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Picture from MAXIM website.

As you can see the output stage is a cockcroft walton multiplier so you can add more stages and get more output voltage. Alternatively you build two of these (with fewer added CW stages) and make a bipolar supply that spans +/-750 volts.

The circuit above runs from 5 volts but the principal is the same for any DC supply voltage; you make a (circa) 50 kHz oscillator and amplify it to produce a large peak-to-peak voltage swing then use the CW multiplier to make a larger DC voltage.

More Geiger Muller tube power supply images