GaNAsSb material for ultrafast microwave photoconductive switching application

Abstract

We report a photoconductive switch with GaNAsSb as active material for microwave switching application. The GaNAsSb layer was grown by molecular beam epitaxy in conjunction with a rf plasma-assisted nitrogen source and a valved antimony cracker source. The 0.5 μm thick GaNAsSb photoabsorption layer contains 3.5% of N and 9% of Sb. The switch exhibits pulsed response with full width at half maximum of 30 ps and photoresponse of up to 1.6 μm. In microwave switching application, the switch shows ON/OFF ratio of 11 dB at 1 GHz and response up to 15 GHz.