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This study investigated the extent to which the proposed Factory of Ideas (FOI) teaching approach impacted on students’ understanding of energy based on their prior knowledge. The FOI is a didactic...

Using surface acoustic waves (SAW) the elastic properties of 500 nm thick epitaxial off-stoichiometric Ni-Mn-Ga films prepared by sputtering on MgO substrate were determined in a broad temperature range both in austenite and martensite and across the martensitic transformation. At room temperature the films were in non-modulated martensite with tweed-like microstructure. Structural and magnetic studies proved that the martensitic structure can be considered homogenous on the scale of surface waves owing to the fine twinning. Measured angular dependence of SAW velocities indicated that the averaged in-plane tetragonal structure can be used for the calculation of elastic coefficients in martensite. The phase velocity of SAW showed an anomaly around the phase transition temperature due to changes of the shear elastic coefficients, c ' and c 44 . During cooling there was a gradual softening of c ' in austenite. The softening turned to stiffening at the onset of the martensitic transformation while c 44 sharply decreased. The shear coefficients for martensite and paramagnetic austenite of the film are comparable to Ni-Mn-Ga bulk single crystal. No significant effect of magnetic field on elastic coefficients was detected in agreement with the bulk.

A photoacoustic, laser ultrasonics based approach in an Impulsive Stimulated Scattering (ISS) implementation was used to investigate the texture in polycrystalline metal plates. The angular dependence of the 'polycrystalline' surface acoustic wave (SAW) velocity measured along regions containing many grains was experimentally determined and compared with simulated results that were based on the angular dependence of the 'single grain' SAW velocity within single grains and the grain orientation distribution. The polycrystalline SAW velocities turn out to vary with texture. The SAW velocities and their angular variations for {110} texture were found to be larger than that the ones for {111} texture or the strong γ fiber texture. The SAW velocities for {001} texture were larger than for {111} texture, but with almost the same angular dependence. The results infer the feasibility to apply angular SAW angular dispersion measurements by laser ultrasonics for on-line texture monitoring.

In this work, the impulsive stimulated scattering technique, in a heterodyne diffraction detection configuration (ISS-HD), was used to study the dependence of the speed of sound and the thermal diffusivity on the concentration of silver nanoparticles in water, to which also d-glucose and carboxymethyl cellulose were added, in order to reduce sedimentation. The ISS-HD results, which show a slight increase of thermal diffusivity with increasing concentration, were cross-validated with results obtained by the inverse photopyroelectric method and the hot ball technique.

Results are presented on the thermal and elastic properties of a thin, 1.5 μm, nanocrystalline diamond coating (NCD), deposited on a silicon substrate by microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. A combination of two all-optical measurement techniques, impulsive stimulated thermal scattering and grating induced laser beam deflection, was employed to launch and detect surface acoustic waves (SAWs). The relation between the dispersive propagation velocity of SAWs to the coating-substrate geometry is exploited to determine the elastic properties of the NCD coating. The elastic properties are found to be consistent with literature values. The thermal properties of the coating were determined by monitoring the thermal diffusion induced washing away of the laser induced transient surface temperature grating. The transient thermal grating signals were fitted by the low-frequency limit of a thermoelastic model for a multilayer configuration. Similar to the dispersion of the surface acoustic wave velocity, the characteristic time of the thermal diffusion driven grating decay evolves from a coating-dominated value at short grating spacings towards a substrate-dominated value at grating spacings well exceeding the coating thickness. The grating spacing dependence of the corresponding effective thermal diffusivity was experimentally determined and fitted, leading to a value for the thermal diffusivity of the NCD coating αNCD = 8.4− 0.1+ 2.7 mm2·s− 1, which is an order of magnitude lower than that of the silicon substrate. The low value of the thermal diffusivity is interpreted with a simple touching model.

In recent decades, the impulsive stimulated scattering (ISS) method, which is based on photothermal and photoacoustic phenomena, has been successfully used to simultaneously investigate the thermal and elastic properties in a four-wave mixing configuration, both in transmission in semitransparent materials and on reflecting surfaces of solids. In this report, an extension of the technique is proposed to study a laser-induced thermoelastic response at the free surface of glass-forming liquids. The employed all-optical configuration allows extraction of information about the acoustic shear modulus in the MHz frequency range, and hence is complementary to the classical ISS configuration in the transmission mode, which is suitable to study the relaxation of the longitudinal acoustic modulus, and to another earlier reported ISS configuration, which is exciting and probing laser-induced thermoelastic phenomena at a liquid–solid interface. A theoretical model is presented and numerically illustrated for the glass transition of glycerol, and experimentally validated for water at room temperature.

The underlying working principle of detecting impulsive stimulated scattering signals in a differential configuration of heterodyne diffraction detection is unraveled by involving optical scattering theory. The feasibility of the method for the thermoelastic characterization of coating-substrate systems is demonstrated on the basis of simulated data containing typical levels of noise. Besides the classical analysis of the photoacoustic part of the signals, which involves fitting surface acoustic wave dispersion curves, the photothermal part of the signals is analyzed by introducing thermal wave dispersion curves to represent and interpret their grating wavelength dependence. The intrinsic possibilities and limitations of both inverse problems are quantified by making use of least and most squares analysis. publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Determination of thermoelastic material properties by differential heterodyne detection of impulsive stimulated thermal scattering journaltitle: Photoacoustics articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pacs.2015.05.001 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier GmbH ispartof: PHOTOACOUSTICS vol:3 issue:2 pages:64-77 ispartof: location:Germany status: published

Thin nano- to microcrystalline diamond (N/MCD) films were deposited on silicon substrates using plasma enhanced microwave chemical vapor deposition. Selected layers were covered with a thin metal layer of Cr to enhance their optical absorption characteristics for photothermal and photoacoustic experiments. A heterodyne diffraction method was used to investigate the thermoelastic signatures of the N/MCD layers. While the dispersion of surface acoustic waves turned out to be difficult to determine due to high optical scattering from the diamond crystallites, it was found that a diamond film of ~ 2 μm thick is enhancing the thermal diffusion along the surface.

MnO2 is a material of interest in the development of high energy-density batteries, specifically as a coating material for internal 3D structures, thus ensuring rapid energy deployment. Its electrochemical properties have been mapped extensively, but there are, to the best of the authors' knowledge, no records of the elastic properties of thin film MnO 2. Impulsive stimulated thermal scattering (ISTS), also known as the heterodyne diffraction or transient grating technique, was used to determine the Young's modulus (E) and porosity (ψ) of a 500nm thick MnO2 coating on a Si(001) substrate. ISTS is an all optical method that is able to excite and detect surface acoustic waves (SAWs) on opaque samples. From the measured SAW velocity dispersion, the Young's modulus and porosity were determined to be E=25±1GPa and ψ = 42 ± 1 %, respectively. These values were confirmed by independent techniques and determined by a most-squares analysis of the carefully fitted SAW velocity dispersion. This study demonstrates the ability of the presented technique to determine the elastic parameters of a thin, porous film on an anisotropic substrate. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. ispartof: Journal of Applied Physics vol:116 issue:2 status: published

This paper describes the application of Impulse Stimulated Thermal Scattering (ISTS) for measurement of surface acoustic wave (SAW) velocity and thermal diffusion along a free surface of a strongly anisotropic material. The motivation for this work stems from the study of thermoelastic properties of individual phases of ferroelastics; experimental results were obtained on a single crystal in the austenitic phase a Cu-Al-Ni alloy (bcc single crystal having elastic anisotropy factor of about 12). The measured SAW velocities in specific directions are in a good agreement with the values calculated for the elastic constants obtained by other ultrasonic methods. Similarly, the evaluated thermal diffusivity coefficient (22 ± 2).10−6 m2/s of the austenite is consistent with the data in the literature. The proposed approach has also a potential for characterization of thin films grown on anisotropic substrates.

© 2019 by the authors. A laser ultrasonics approach to remotely characterize the elastic and thermal properties of a coating-substrate structure, used to protect fuel claddings in lead-bismuth eutectic cooled nuclear reactors, is presented and validated with experimental results. A transient grating geometry is used for multiple wavelength excitation of thermoelastic displacements, and laser beam deflection for detection. The value of Young's modulus of the coating layer as calculated from the coating's Rayleigh velocity of 190 ± 50 GPa is in accordance with a nano-indentation measurement. Using a priori knowledge concerning the density and elastic parameters of the coating and substrate, scanning the sample allows the obtaining of a coating thickness map in a fully remote, all-optical way, with an accuracy of about 4 microns for a coating of around 20-micron average thickness. Analyzing the transient thermal grating decay yields a thermal diffusivity value of (5.0 ± 1.6) × 10 -6 m 2 /s, in the range of low-carbon steels. The consistency of the results infers that the all-optical laser ultrasonics approach should be feasible for remote inspection of the quality of optically rough coated claddings in the harsh environment of a nuclear reactor. ispartof: Applied Sciences-Basel vol:9 issue:5 status: published