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

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.

keywords: Laser power transfer, power converter, vertical-structure, tunnel-junction