Research on characteristics of GaAs PCSS triggered by 905nm laser diode array

Abstract

Photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs), especially GaAs PCSS, have an excellent performance in the field of pulse power. Since PCSSs can operate in non-linear mode, laser diodes, which are small in size, low-cost, driven easily compared to traditional laser devices, can be used to trigger them at low power. In former literatures, energy is generally considered as an important factor of influences on the characteristics of PCSSs, but power density is rarely studied. In this paper, an array of laser diodes which emit laser pulse with a dominant wavelength of 905 nm and an optical fiber with 5 branches are used to trigger a semi-insulating GaAs PCSS. By adjusting the driving current and the quantity of LDs in series, power density of laser pulse is in a range of 525.2∼2347.5 W/mm2. It's found that the output characteristics of PCSS are strongly influenced by power density of laser pulse. The related experiment results and further discussions are presented in this following paper.