As it happens, ordinary fuel injection injectors make fairly good puffer valves and are apparently high vacuum compatible (after a bit of modification). I believe they are using them at UC Irvine in their Z pinch system. They've been used in lots of other applications.
They have very fast and repeatable response times (after all, they pulse at several hundred Hz in their nominal application), among other desirable characteristics.
Created on Monday, December 18, 2000 1:07 PM EDT by James Lux