GaAs Vertical-Tunnel-Junction Converter for Ultra-High Laser Power Transfer

Abstract

High power laser transmission is being intensively researched as a potential solution to transfer power to remote systems, being the power converter (PC) one of the main limiting factor to improve the system efficiency ( η ). Current PCs are mostly horizontal structures in which the η heavily decreases at large input power. In this work, we propose a novel GaAs-based vertical-tunnel-junction (VTJ) PC suitable for ultra-high (UH) input power density (Pin). This structure does not suffer from η degradation at high Pin because it is designed to have low current density, high output voltage and reduced series resistance (~ 2 orders of magnitude lower than the state-of-the-art PCs). We have demonstrated increasing η with Pin, reaching values higher than 76% at 3000 W⋅ cm−2. This vertical-based architecture enables a new set of potential applications for wireless PC to power remote systems with η exceeding today’ s state-of-the-art PC designs.