Positive and Negative Symmetric Pulses with Fast Rising Edge Generated from a GaAs Photoconductive Semiconductor Switch

Femtosecond response of a free-standing LT-GaAs photoconductive switch.

We present a novel, free-standing low-temperature GaAs (LT-GaAs) photoconductive switch and demonstrate its femtosecond performance. A 1-microm-thick layer of a single-crystal LT-GaAs was patterned into 5-10-microm-wide and 15-30-microm-long bars, separated from their GaAs substrate and, subsequently, placed across gold coplanar transmission lines deposited on a Si substrate, forming a photocon...

Photoconductive Semiconductor Switches: Laser Q-switch Trigger and Switch-Trigger Laser Integration

This report provides a summary of the Pulser In a Chip 9000-Discretionary LDRD. The program began in January of 1997 and concluded in September of 1997. The over-arching goal of this LDRD is to study whether laser diode triggered photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSS) can be used to activate electro-optic devices such as Q-switches and Pockels cells and to study possible laser diode/ swi...

Photoconductive terahertz generation from textured semiconductor materials

Photoconductive (PC) terahertz (THz) emitters are often limited by ohmic loss and Joule heating-as these effects can lead to thermal runaway and premature device breakdown. To address this, the proposed work introduces PC THz emitters based on textured InP materials. The enhanced surface recombination and decreased charge-carrier lifetimes of the textured InP materials reduce residual photocurr...

Development of a GaAs Photoconductive Switch for the Magneto-Inertial Fusion Electrical Discharge System

Quantitative comparison of terahertz emission from (100) InAs surfaces and a GaAs large-aperture photoconductive switch at high fluences.

InAs has previously been reported to be an efficient emitter of terahertz radiation at low excitation fluences by use of femtosecond laser pulses. The scaling and saturation of terahertz emission from a (100) InAs surface as a function of excitation fluence is measured and quantitatively compared with the emission from a GaAs large-aperture photoconductive switch. We find that, although the ins...