Transient grating spectroscopy: An ultrarapid, nondestructive materials evaluation technique

Abstract

Structure-property relationships are the foundation of materials science. Linking microstructure and material properties is essential for predicting material response to driving forces, managing in-service material degradation, and engineering materials for optimal performance. Elastic, thermal, and acoustic properties provide a convenient gateway to directly or indirectly probe material structure across multiple length scales. We review how using the laser-induced transient grating spectroscopy (TGS) technique, which uses a transient diffraction grating to generate surface acoustic waves (SAWs) and temperature gratings on a material surface, non-destructively reveals the material elasticity, thermal diffusivity, and energy dissipation on the sub-microsecond timescale, within a tunable sub-surface depth. This technique has already been applied to many challenging problems in materials characterization, from analysis of radiation damage, to colloidal crystals, to phonon-mediated thermal transport in nanostructured systems, to crystal orientation and lattice parameter determination. Examples of these applications, as well as inferring aspects of microstructural evolution, illustrate the wide potential reach of TGS to solve old materials challenges, and to uncover new science. We conclude by looking ahead at the tremendous potential of TGS for materials discovery and optimization when applied in situ to dynamically evolving systems.

arXiv comment35 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (7)

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• Interaction of a Contact Resonance of Microspheres with Surface Acoustic Waves
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• Phase-controlled, heterodyne laser-induced transient grating measurements of thermal transport properties in opaque material
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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Machine learning in nuclear materials research
• Thermal Energy Transport in Oxide Nuclear Fuel
• Molecular chirality and its monitoring by ultrafast X-ray pulses
• Tutorial: Characterizing Microscale Energy Transport in Materials with Transient Grating Spectroscopy
• Non-contact, non-destructive mapping of thermal diffusivity and surface acoustic wave speed using transient grating spectroscopy
• Non-destructive study of collision cascade damage in self-ion irradiated tungsten using HR-EBSD and ECCI
• Towards quantitative inference of nanoscale defects in irradiated metals and alloys
• The dynamic evolution of swelling in nickel concentrated solid solution alloys through in situ property monitoring