Detection of laser-induced nanosecond ultrasonic pulses in metals using a pancake coil and a piezoelectric sensor.

A piezoelectric sensor and a pancake coil sensor were used for broadband detection of laser-induced ultrasound in single-crystal aluminum and polycrystalline nickel. Pressure pulses with pronounced compression phases were induced by laser pulses of 5 ns duration from one side of the specimens and detected from the opposite side. A coupling layer of water was required for the piezoelectric method, whereas the pancake coil placed in the biasing permanent field of a cylindrical magnet ~0.25 T allowed noncontact detection. The signals detected by a piezoelectric transducer showed bipolar form and their spectra covered the range from 5 to 90 MHz. The signal measured in aluminum by a pancake coil was assigned to the eddy current sources and had single polarity. The peak-to-peak value of the signal in nickel was higher and had bipolar form because of the inverse magnetostrictive effect. The high-frequency limit detected by the pancake coil approached 200 MHz.

Attenuation of ultrasound in severely plastically deformed nickel.

Ultrasound attenuation was measured in nickel specimens of about 30 mm diameter prepared using the high pressure torsion technique. The cold working process produced an equivalent shear strain increasing from zero at the center up to 1000% at the edge of the specimen. The fragmentation of the grains due to multiple dislocations led to an ultrafine microstructure with large angle grain boundaries. The mean value of the grain size distribution gradually decreased from ∼50 µm at the center to 0.2 µm at the edge. Laser pulses of 5 ns were employed for the excitation of broadband ultrasound pulses covering the spectral range of 0.1-150 MHz. The ultrasound pulses were measured from the opposite side of the specimen by means of an optical interferometer and a piezoelectric foil transducer in two experimental setups. The features of the detected signal forms are discussed. The absolute value of the attenuation decreases from the center to the edge of the specimen showing nearly linear frequency dependence. The variation of the phase velocity was measured in a 6 mm-thick high pressure torsion nickel sample, revealing a velocity increase from the center to the edge.

Nonlinear surface acoustic waves: silicon strength in phonon-focusing directions.

The anisotropy of the elastic properties of single-crystal silicon manifests itself in features of both the linear and nonlinear surface acoustic wave (SAW) propagation. Directions showing the phonon-focusing effect and strong nonlinearity were employed in contact-free and notch-free laser-based fracture experiments, yielding the intrinsic strength of silicon. The critical tensile stress values vary between 2.5 GPa and 7 GPa for the different crystallographic planes and directions of SAW propagation investigated.

Optoacoustic imaging of absorbing objects in a turbid medium: ultimate sensitivity and application to breast cancer diagnostics.

One of the major medical applications of optoacoustic (OA) tomography is in the diagnostics of early-stage breast cancer. A numerical approach was developed to characterize the following parameters of an OA imaging system: resolution, maximum depth at which the tumor can be detected, and image contrast. The parameters of the 64-element focused array transducer were obtained. The results of numerical modeling were compared with known analytical solutions and further validated by phantom experiments. The OA images of a 3 mm piece of bovine liver immersed in diluted milk at various depths were obtained. Based on the results of modeling, a signal filtering algorithm for OA image contrast enhancement has been proposed.