  This paper reports on experimental work related to a technology development
project that had to be abandoned in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recognizing that the window of opportunity for timely exploitation of this
technology is no longer open and also taking into account the likely future
commercial value of the downstream innovations, it was decided to partially
release proprietary experimental information which is of current scientific
interest to the plasma focus community. This information pertains to the
replacement of the traditional plasma initiation method using a sliding
discharge on a glass or ceramic insulator with a novel construction. This paper
discusses the motivation, theoretical background, practical realization and
experimental observations. Some downstream novel plasma focus based technology
concepts that are heavily dependent on this innovation are briefly described
