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Concept
Gas-filled tube
Summary
A gas-filled tube, also commonly known as a discharge tube or formerly as a Plücker tube, is an arrangement of electrodes in a gas within an insulating, temperature-resistant envelope. Gas-filled tubes exploit phenomena related to electric discharge in gases, and operate by ionizing the gas with an applied voltage sufficient to cause electrical conduction by the underlying phenomena of the Townsend discharge. A gas-discharge lamp is an electric light using a gas-filled tube; these include fluorescent lamps, metal-halide lamps, sodium-vapor lamps, and neon lights. Specialized gas-filled tubes such as krytrons, thyratrons, and ignitrons are used as switching devices in electric devices.
The voltage required to initiate and sustain discharge is dependent on the pressure and composition of the fill gas and geometry of the tube. Although the envelope is typically glass, power tubes often use ceramics, and military tubes often use glass-lined metal. Both hot cathode and cold cathode type devices are encountered.
Hydrogen is used in tubes used for very fast switching, e.g. some thyratrons, dekatrons, and krytrons, where very steep edges are required. The build-up and recovery times of hydrogen are much shorter than in other gases. Hydrogen thyratrons are usually hot-cathode. Hydrogen (and deuterium) can be stored in the tube in the form of a metal hydride, heated with an auxiliary filament; hydrogen by heating such storage element can be used to replenish cleaned-up gas, and even to adjust the pressure as needed for a thyratron operation at a given voltage.
Deuterium is used in ultraviolet lamps for ultraviolet spectroscopy, in neutron generator tubes, and in special tubes (e.g. crossatron). It has higher breakdown voltage than hydrogen. In fast switching tubes it is used instead of hydrogen where high voltage operation is required. For a comparison, the hydrogen-filled CX1140 thyratron has anode voltage rating of 25 kV, while the deuterium-filled and otherwise identical CX1159 has 33 kV.
Official source
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