New experimental results of optically activated BMFET switches with different cell design

Optically activated semiconductor devices play a very attractive role in power circuits control applications. In fact, due to the very high galvanic isolation between the control circuit side and the power circuit side, these specific devices can solve the safety problems and eliminate the unintentional switching. In an earlier work, a detailed theoretical and numerical analysis of the BMFET as an optically controlled switch was presented. In this paper, the authors complete the previous analysis by presenting experimental results on the optical switching of various kinds of bipolar mode field effect transistor (BMFET) obtained with a low-power optical source. The BMFETs used are different in design parameters and geometries. The results obtained are in good agreement with the authors' previous theoretical and numerical previsions.