Ultrafast discharge phenomena of photoconductive switches with spark gap

Photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSS) are one of the few devices that allow generation of high voltage electrical pulses with subnanosecond rise time and always used as a sweeping unit to obtain low timing jitter for steak camera. In order to explore the properties of those devices, many experiments have been designed previously by combined PCSS with other switches to meet specific needs. In this paper, we report the discharge phenomena in the form of output waveforms with ultrafast risetime and full width at half maximum (FWHM) based on semi-insulating (SI) gallium arsenide (GaAs) PCSS triggering spark gap and the operation of SI GaAs PCSS triggering spark gap is investigated. It was shown that PCSS are the good candidate for generating ultrafast pulses with good reproducibility of waveform.