| Krytrons are used in many high voltage pulse forming
applications, including laser triggers, pockels cell triggers,
exploding bridge wire detonators, high speed photography, and particle accelerator
experiments, among others. They have been largely replaced with
solid state devices in many applications, but the replacement devices
have trade offs, including larger size, enviromental sensitivity, jitter, and reliability
issues that may make them difficult to implement in existing systems. Krytrons were made by EG&G (now Perkin Elmer). They are no longer in production. However, they do appear on the surplus market occasionally. They are getting harder to locate if you have a system that was designed around them. The most common type is the KN-6, but the table below lists most of the other types that are availabe and their parameters. Silicon Investigations is in the process of determining if there is a current market for these tubes as repair spares, or, possibly, for new designs. If you have found this page, you are helping us determine if there is a significant enough market to justify a program to manufacture them again. If you would like to send us email regarding your potential use, number of units annually, and particular model of tube, we would appreciate it, as this will give us the information to make the decision to investigate the feasibility of this venture. The following information on the Krytron may be of interest to anyone who has found this link.
The Krytron A krytron is a four element (cathode, grid (trigger), anode, and keep alive) gas filled cold cathode switching tube. Examples: EG&GKN22 EG&GKN6. The control grid in these devices actually encloses the anode with a small opening at the top. Conduction occurs through this hole. The gas in the tube provides ions to neutralise the space charge allowing a high current to be obtained at a lower voltage than otherwise possible. Krytrons contain a small amount of radioactive nickel (Ni-63) which is a beta particle emitter. This aids the initial glow discharge formation between the cathode and the keep alive electrode.
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