The theoretical study of the measuring thermal diffusivity of semi-infinite solid using the photothermal displacement

A method of measuring the thermal diffusivity of semi-infinite solid material at room temperature using photothermal displacement is proposed. In previous works, within the constant thickness of material, the thermal diffusivity was determined by the magnitude and phase of deformation gradient as the relative position between the pump and probe beams. In this study, however, a complete theoretical treatment of the photothermal displacement technique has been performed for thermal diffusivity measurement in semi-infinite solid materials. The influence of parameters, such as, radius and modulation frequency of the pump beam and the thermal diffusivity, was studied. We propose a simple analysis method based on the zero-crossing position of real part of deformation gradient and the minimum position of phase as the relative position between two beams. It is independent of parameters such as power of pump beam, absorption coefficient, reflectivity, Poisson’s ratio, and thermal expansion coefficient.