Investigation Of A Laser-controlled, Copper-doped GaAs Closing And Opening Switch For Pulsed Power Applications

This paper describes the recent power scaling of the Bulk Optically Controlled Semiconductor Switch (BOSS). The processes of persistent photoconductivity followed by photo-quenching have been demonstrated in copper-compensated, silicon-doped, semi-insulating GaAs (GaAs:Cu:Si). These processes allow a switch to be developed which can be closed by the application of one laser pulse and opened by the application of a second laser pulse of longer wavelength. The high-power switching results indicate that the BOSS device will operate at multi-megawatt power levels. The results of our power scaling effort have suggested improvements to the basic BOSS design that will allow us to achieve reliable operation at high power levels.