signal generation

Hi, I'd like to build one of these: https://phys.org/news/2006-04-lunar-buster.html Basically it's a sort of static electricity linear motor that pushes dust around. I understand general principles of electronics and have built a few circuits from kits, but that's about it. I figure this...

It might be a bit broad but I'd like it to confine on the astable operation of the 555 timer. That would be, generating a signal with a certain frequency and pulse width. Although we can also output sawtooth/triangle signal by using the capacitor connected to the 555, so there's also that...