Company Overview

Founded in 1999, OptiSwitch Technology has a staff of senior scientists with more than 25 years combined expertise in areas of pulsed power including: laser diode drivers, power semiconductor design and fabrication, power electronics, custom packaging of high voltage and high current switches, semiconductor lasers, solid-state lasers, and electro-optics. We apply these diverse talents to creating innovative solutions for our customers' most challenging problems.

In early 2008 we launched our first line of standard products-pulsed laser diode drivers with unique capabilities to be used in applications such as range finding, target designation, and illumination. Our highest power unit is well suited for testing the catastrophic optical damage (COD) limit of laser diodes. Please click the link below to enter our pulsed laser diode driver products page.

In 2008, OTC under internal funding and funding from the US Army developed a large area break over diode which we termed the extreme break over diode (XBOD). This device has demonstrated 12 kV blocking and switching 166 kA in 167 µs.

In addition to our standard product line of pulsed laser diode drivers and custom high voltage semiconductor switches, OptiSwitch is pioneering the development of ultra reliable pulsed electric field (PEF) systems for biofuels production employing our patent pending XBOD technology.

OptiSwitch Technology Corporation is located in San Diego, CA, a key technology hub for advanced R&D. Our 7500 square foot facilities includes 1000 sq ft advanced R&D electronics and photonics lab with high voltage test systems and a complete semiconductor processing fabrication facility and support equipment capable of processing >1000 wafers annually.

More about our silicon foundry:

One of OTC's businesses specializes in the design and manufacture of power semiconductor switches which are used for extremely high voltage (>10 kV) and high current (>100 kA) applications. This field of use is generally termed "Pulsed Power". Pulsed Power switches are designed using a 2-D device and processing code (Medici and Tsuprem4). These state-of-the-art design codes are sold and supported by Synopsys Corporation. These codes allow our engineers to design a process flow to fabricate the device plus electrical modeling to ensure that the device meets or exceeds our customers' specifications. Once designed, the switches are fabricated in our 4-inch semiconductor fab which includes the following equipment:

• Two double-stack high temperature diffusion furnaces
• Photolithography area with a double sided OAI mask aligner
• E-beam evaporation system
• Various wet benches and SRDs
• Diagnostic equipment
• Detak profilometer
• Tencor Surfscan particle monitoring system
• Semilab Micro-PCD lifetime mapping system
• Inspection microscopes
• 4-point probes
• Nanospec for film thickness measurements

The backend area includes dicing saws, grinding and lapping equipment along with a computer controlled air-abrasive unit for cutting and/or shaping silicon.

After fabrication, the switches are qualified in our pulsed power testing lab. This extensive laboratory includes computer controlled test beds to generate >200 kA at 20 kV, oscilloscopes and an array of high voltage probes and current monitors.

Please contact our design engineers for your demanding switch applications.