A Passive Dual-Circulator Based Transmit/Receive Switch for Use with Reflection Resonators in Pulse Electron Paramagnetic Resonance

To protect the low-noise amplifier (LNA) in the receive arm of a pulsed 250 MHz EPR bridge, it is necessary to install as much isolation as possible between the power exciting the spin system and the LNA when high power is present in the receive arm of the bridge, while allowing the voltage induced by the magnetization in the spin sample to be passed undistorted and undiminished to the LNA once power is reduced below the level that can cause LNA damage. We discuss a combination of techniques to accomplish this involving the power-routing circulator in the bridge, a second circulator acting as an isolator with passive shunt PIN diodes immediately following the second circulator. The low resistance of the forward biased PIN diode passively generates an impedance mismatch at the second circulator output port during the high-power excitation pulse and resonator ring down. The mismatch reflects the high power to the remaining port of the second circulator, dumping it into a system impedance matched load. only when the power diminishes below the diode conduction threshold, the resistance of the PIN diode will rise to a value much higher than the system impedance. This brings the device into conduction mode. We find that the present design passively limits the output power to 14 dBm independent of the input power. For high-input power levels, the isolation may exceed 60 dB. This level of isolation is sufficient to fully protect the LNA of a pulse EPR bridge. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Concepts Magn Reson Part B (Magn Reson Engineering) 3513: 133-138, 2009