Femtosecond laser-acoustic modeling and simulation for AlCu nanofilm nondestructive testing

Abstract

Photoacoustic detection has shown excellent performance in measuring thickness and detecting defects in metal nanofilms. However, existing research on ultrafast lasers mainly focuses on using picosecond or nanosecond lasers for large-scale material processing and measurement. The theoretical study of femtosecond laser sources for photoacoustic nondestructive testing (NDT) in nanoscale thin film materials receives much less emphasis, leading to a lack of a complete physical model that covers the entire process from excitation to measurement. In this study, we developed a comprehensive physical model that combines the two-temperature model with the acoustic wave generation and detection model. On the basis of the physical model, we established a simulation model to visualize the ultrafast laser-material interaction process. The damage threshold of the laser source is determined, and the effect of key parameters (laser fluence, pulse duration, and wavelength) for AlCu nanofilms on the femtosecond photoacoustic NDT process is discussed using numerical results from the finite element model. The numerical results under certain parameters show good agreement with the experimental results.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

femtosecond photoacoustic / nondestructive testing / metal nanofilm / ultrafast laser-matter interaction / modeling and simulation / semiconductor manufacturing

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52375541, 52022034, 52130504, and 62175075); the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (Grant No. 2022YFF0709104); the Key Research and Development Plan of Hubei Province, China (Grant No. 2020BAA8); the Interdisciplinary Research Program of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China (Grant No. 2023JCYJ047); and the Innovation Project of Optics Valley Laboratory, China (Grant No. OVL2023PY003). The authors would like to express their gratitude to Dr. Shihao Dong and Mr. Xiaolei Zhang from Shanghai Precision Measurement Semiconductor Technology, Inc., China for their valuable contributions and insightful discussions related to this research.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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2024 Higher Education Press