Michel, have you read the books:

Cold Cathode Discharge Tubes by Acton & Swift
Cold Cathode Tube Circuit Design by D M Neale
Glimmröhren und Kaltkatoden-Relaisröhren by Otto Paul Herrnkind
Glowlamp Manual by General Electric
Kaltkatodenrelaisröhren Dekadenzählröhren by DR Roland Hübner
Kaltkatodenröhren by Greiff
Electronic Counting Circuits Techniques & Devices by MULLARD
Ziffernanziegeröhren by VALVO

There is a lot about what happens inside a cold cathode tube in those
books with explanations about charge, deionization and stuff - way
above my head but it gave me a good ground to stand on when trying to
understand more about what happens inside these tubes, and it was
enough for me to understand it at a basic level.

There are of course many more books that describe these phenomena, but
those are the ones that I have borrowed from libraries and looked
into.

/Martin

On 18 Feb, 11:56, Cobra007 <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think you're right and that would explain why I can't really measure
> the capacitive component. You're talking about negative resistance, I
> had not looked at it that way but it sounds very reasonable, the
> voltage over the tube will decay while the resistance increases so
> that would indeed be negative.
>
> I do indeed use a pulse with series resistor, I let the voltage drop
> from say 150V down to say 100V to turn the tube off. Normally, with a
> capacitive load, the tube's cathode would then immediately drop to
> -50V. This doesn't happen, it doesn't even go below 0V most likely
> because the negative resistance wins over the capacitive properties.
>
> I think the inductive component is very small. At some frequency it
> should resonate I would assume but I can't see that in my step
> response so the inductance must be very very small.
>
> Michel
>
> On Feb 18, 1:51 am, John Rehwinkel <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > How does a nixie behave in the first few hundred micro seconds after
> > > switching off. Is it resistive, capacitive or inductive? I would
> > > assume it to be capacitive but that is not exactly what I measure.
>
> > That's a really good question, and I'll admit I haven't attempted to 
> > measure it.  So, in the grand tradition, I'll take a guess at it.  Said 
> > guess is that the plasma stays ionized for a bit before the atoms settle 
> > back down to ground state, so it would have the electrical properties of an 
> > ionized plasma, which would be: negative resistance.  This would decay to 
> > capacitance as the gas became nonconductive.  there's of course inductance 
> > from the leads, and the capacitance and inductance are distributed 
> > (especially in larger nixies), making a sort of sloppy transmission line 
> > with varying characteristics.  Now I want to see if various nixies have 
> > resonant frequencies, and what I'd get back if I hooked a TDR to a really 
> > big one.
>
> > > It
> > > seems more resistive, so I am wondering if this is normal or am I
> > > doing something wrong?
>
> > I'm curious as to how you're measuring this in the first place.  Are you 
> > using pulses with a trailing voltage and a series resistance, or what?
>
> > - John- Dölj citerad text -
>
> - Visa citerad text -

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