Does anyone know which manufacturer still produces mercury wetted reed relay capable of generating 5ns high voltage pulses? Thx
can you recommend a relay for this application?I assume 5ns is the rise-time of the output signal, not the operating speed of the relay (which is obviously impossible). If so, it can be done, but it requires well controlled impedance transmission line connections directly to the relay contacts. This is best done with stripline or microstrip design techniques on a controlled impedance circuit board, not a trivial task.
As we're here - the speed of light in a vacuum is closer to 1 foot per nano second - it's a physicists rule of thumb.Many logic families could have trouble producing a pulse that fast. I suspect you haven't dealt with speeds like this before, 1ns is 9 inches of travel at light speed. You would need a circuit with a minimum freq response of 200Mhz, and for a square wave it would need to be closer 2 Ghz.
We used to build pulse generators for testing with mercury wetted relays. It uses 1 or 2 kV and a coil to activateg the relay. we use a variac transformer to power the coil. We put the relay in a coaxial structure and used it to discharge a coax cable into a 50 ohm cable. It produced pulses at 120 Hz. The relays were in a glass tube. They didn't last long but long enough for our tests.Does anyone know which manufacturer still produces mercury wetted reed relay capable of generating 5ns high voltage pulses? Thx