Characteristics Comparison of SiC and GaN Extrinsic Vertical Photoconductive Switches

Vertical extrinsic photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs) are presented with initial characteristics comparison between V-doped 4H-SiC and Fe-doped GaN PCSS under axial triggering such as dark resistance, photoconductivity, power output, and breakdown behavior. Experiments are carried out under the 532-nm-wavelength laser with mJ-level energy and a pulse width of 30 ns. Photoconductive experiments show that the photoelectric conversion efficiency of GaN PCSS is 2.27 times higher than 4H-SiC PCSS with the same electric field strength under different laser energies from 1 mJ to 5 mJ. 4H-SiC PCSS with a dark-state resistance of 1012 cm can withstand a bias voltage of 8 kV (16 kV/mm) and laser energy of 8 mJ and the maximum output power is up to 428.7 kW, while that of GaN can only stand a bias voltage of 1 kV (2.9 kV/mm) because of low dark resistance and defect. Obvious cracks of 4H-SiC PCSS can be observed from the breakdown image after breakdown occurs, while the dark-state resistance of GaN PCSS drops from 106 cm to 104 cm under high DC voltage.