The mechanism of the transparent anode in gate commutated thyristors (GCT) was i nvestigated by analyzing its current transportation theoretically, and the expre ssion of the electron current density at the transparent anode is deduced. The s imulation result of the CCT's switching characteristic validates the correctnes s of the mechanism analysis for the transparent anode. In addition, the characte ristic of the transparent anode in GCT devices was analyzed by compared with gen eral anode in GTO devices. The results show that the transparent anode can impro ve effectively the switching characteristic and reduce the switching loss, and t he transparent anode with an additional n buffer layer used in GCT can make the trade off among the on-state characteristic,blocking characteristic and switchin g characteristics,and improve further the characteristics of GCT.The conclusions are validated by the experiment results.