High voltage, bulk GaN-based photoconductive switches for pulsed power applications

Switches are at the heart of all pulsed power and directed energy systems, which find utility in a number of applications. At present, those applications requiring the highest power levels tend to employ spark-gap switches, but these suffer from relatively high delay-times (similar to 10(-8) sec), significant jitter (variation in delay time), and large size. That said, optically-triggered GaN-based photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSS) offer a suitably small form factor and are a cost-effective, versatile solution in which delay times and jitter can be extremely short. Furthermore, the optical control of the switch means that they are electrically isolated from the environment and from any other system circuitry, making them immune from electrical noise, eliminating the potential for inadvertent switch triggering. Our recent work shows great promise to extend high-voltage GaN-based extrinsic PCSS state-of-the-art performance in terms of subnanosecond response times, low on-resistance, high current carrying capacity and high blocking voltages. We discuss our recent results in this work.