SiC Based Optically-Gated High-Power Solid-State Switch for Pulsed-Power Application

Hybrid SiC pulsed-power switch (having bipolar transistor structure) with 5 kV breakdown voltage and 1 kA peak current rating has been designed, which can be triggered optically using a GaAs or SiC front-end triggering structure with a rise time < 20 ns and for sub-microsecond pulse-widths. Structural details and physics-based simulation results are presented. It is shown, that GaAs triggering structure reduces the optical-triggering power requirement significantly without sacrificing switching speed as compared to a SiC optical-triggering structure.