Status on the sphinx generator developed at 'Centre d'Etudes de Gramat' for production of soft X-ray radiation

Summary form only given. Sphinx is the new name of the facility developed for soft X-ray production at Centre d'Etudes de Gramat (CEG), France. This facility is based on the ECF2 generator which was designed as a 1-3 MJ, 1 /spl mu/s rise time, 5-10 MA current driver. In this paper, we present a detailed view of the technology used for the capacitor bank, for the central vacuum part and for the Z-pinch loads. The capacitor bank is based on the 1 /spl mu/s LTD technology; it now stores 1MJ with 12 parallel coaxial lines and 8 LTD stages per line (charged under 50 kV). We plan to have within the next 2 years, 3 MJ stored energy with 16 lines, 10 LTD stages per line (charged under 70 kV). Improvements made on the LTD stages (8 /spl mu/F, 16 nH, 7.5 m/spl Omega/) and on the trigger system are presented. The modularity of this driver and the design of central vacuum part allow to test different power amplification or direct drive schemes: flux compression and now direct drive Z-pinches are the main experiments. Simple and nested aluminum wire arrays designed for K-shell radiation with implosion time as long as 800 ns were tested. We give details on the mechanical arrangements and some experimental results obtained in 2003 and beginning of 2004.