Laser-controlled optical transconductance varistor system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9704622-B2
Application number	US-201514642692-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 9, 2015
Priority date	Mar 7, 2014
Publication date	Jul 11, 2017
Grant date	Jul 11, 2017

Abstract

An optical transconductance varistor system having a modulated radiation source configured to provide modulated stimulus, a wavelength converter operably connected to the modulated radiation source to produce a modulated stimulus having a predetermined wavelength, and a wide bandgap semiconductor photoconductive material in contact between two electrodes. The photoconductive material is operably coupled, such as by a beam transport module, to receive the modulated stimulus having the predetermined wavelength to control a current flowing through the photoconductive material when a voltage potential is present across the electrodes.

First claim

We claim:

1. An optical transconductance varistor system comprising:
a modulated radiation source configured to provide modulated stimulus;
a wavelength converter operably connected to the modulated radiation source to produce a modulated stimulus having a predetermined wavelength; and
a wide bandgap semiconductor photoconductive material in contact between two electrodes and operably coupled to receive the modulated stimulus having the predetermined wavelength to control a current flowing through the photoconductive material when a voltage potential is present across the electrodes.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the predetermined wavelength produced by the wavelength converter corresponds to a bandgap energy of the wide bandgap semiconductor material.

3. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:
a beam pump surrounding the photoconductive material for directing the modulated stimulus into the photoconductive material; and
an optical diffusion element arranged to diffuse/disperse the modulated stimulus prior to entering the beam pump and the photoconductive material.

4. The system of claim 3 , wherein the optical diffusion element is a tapered light pipe.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the modulated radiation source is a modulated laser.

6. The system of claim 5 ,
wherein the modulated laser is a multi-emitter laser-diode array.

7. The system of claim 6 ,
wherein the multi-emitter laser-diode array is an array of VCSELs.

8. The system of claim 6 ,
wherein the multi-emitter laser-diode array is a double heterostructure laser diode array.

9. The system of claim 1 ,
wherein the modulated radiation source is modulated by a modulation source selected from a group consisting of an arbitrary waveform generator and a pulse generator.

10. The system of claim 1 ,
wherein the modulated radiation source, the wavelength converter, and the photoconductive material are integrated together on a substrate.

Assignees

• Nguyen Hoang T
• Stuart Brent C
• L Livermore Nat Security Llc

Inventors

• Nguyen Hoang T
• Stuart Brent C

Classifications

• H01S5/0615

  Q-switching, i.e. in which the quality factor of the optical resonator is rapidly changed · CPC title

• H01S5/32316

  comprising only (Al)GaAs · CPC title

• H01L31/09

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G02B6/0005

  the light guides being of the fibre type (G02B6/0003 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H01L31/162

  Electricity · mapped topic