Quantitative Short-pulse Acoustic Microscopy and Application to Materials Characterization

Abstract A new acoustic microscopy method was developed for providing near-surface elastic property mapping of a material. This method has a number of advantages over the traditional V(z) technique. First, it enables one to perform measurements in an automated mode that only requires user intervention in the setup phase. This automated mode makes it feasible to obtain quantitative microscopy images of the elastic property over an area on the material being tested. Also, it only requires a conventional ultrasonic system operating in pulsed mode for collecting the data, rather than a specialized tone-burst system, which is needed in the traditional quantitative scanning acoustic microscopy technique. Finally, unlike the traditional method, the new experimental process does not require calibration of the systems electronics or additional reference data taken under hard-to-duplicate identical conditions from a material that does not exhibit surface acoustic waves.