Abstract
The electrical and optical characteristics of the new high-speed Al/a-Si/c-Si(p)/c-Si(n+)/Al and Al/a- SiC/c-Si(p)/c-Si(n+)/Al optically controlled switches are presented in this paper. These switches exhibit the lowest ever reported values of rise and fall times, for this kind of switches, of about 3ns. They also exhibit a temperature and light reversibly controlled forward breakover voltage (VBF), together with high values of light triggering sensitivity.