Ultralow Impedance High Voltage Connector

The advanced warheads required for the next generation of munitions will require the use of advanced initiators such as exploding foil initiators (EFIs), and they will require that these EFIs be employed in innovative and, by our present standards, complex arrangements. Certain advanced munitions will require that these warheads and their initiators survive high-g impact and target penetration events without degradation of function. All will, of course, have to survive and operate in the full spectrum of the military storage and operating environment. Meeting these challenges will require the development of a new packaging and interconnection technique which provides maximum flexibility to the warhead design while still meeting the military environments and the tough functional challenges of the advanced initiator application. The results of these efforts will provide a higher efficiency energy transfer allowing the use of lower power and/or smaller size systems for commercial and military use in other products. A key element of these future system is the design of appropriate connectors. The proposed program is for the development of an ultralow impedance high voltage connector. The program focuses on EFIs, both the conventional copper-clad polyimide systems and the more advanced, thin-film, deposited-bridge "chip" types. It includes the definition of requirements, tradeoff analyses, and breadboard evaluation of a preliminary design. In addition to the electrical performance, the design requirements include sufficient ruggedness to survive hard target penetration and hermiticity for long term storage survival of the system.