Amplitude, pulse-width, and wavelength modulation strategies for an optically-controlled power DMOSFET

We illustrate the switching performance of a novel optically triggered power MOSFET (OT-MOS) for three different optical modulation techniques. It integrates a silicon (Si) based power MOSFET and two gallium-arsenide (GaAs) based photoconductive-triggering blocks for ´all-optical´ turn-on and turn-off of the OT-MOS. We investigate the effectiveness of amplitude, pulse-width, and wavelength modulation techniques to rapidly turn-on and turn-off the OT-MOS. The OT-MOS can eliminate the problems encountered in conventional high-frequency gate drivers due to electromagnetic interference (EMI). Furthermore, the design of the gate drivers for a low- or a high-side OT-MOS, unlike a conventional electrically triggered power MOSFET, is the same; this leads to simplified gate-driver architectures for two-and multilevel power-electronic converters.