Bc. Li et al., SENSITIVE PHOTOTHERMAL INTERFEROMETRIC DETECTION METHOD FOR CHARACTERIZATION OF TRANSPARENT PLATE SAMPLES, Review of scientific instruments, 67(10), 1996, pp. 3649-3657
In this article, a recently developed, sensitive photothermal interfer
ometric detection technique, in which an interference fringe pattern f
ormed by overlapping two reflected probe beams from the front and rear
surfaces of the sample was used to measure the photothermal signal, a
nd its application for characterization of transparent (or partially t
ransparent) plate samples were theoretically and experimentally invest
igated in detail. The theoretical descriptions of the intensity distri
bution of the interference fringe pattern and the photothermal signal
with pulsed excitation were presented. Experiments were conducted with
plate samples of optical glasses doped with heavy-metal ions and the
results were compared with the theoretical ones. Good agreement betwee
n theoretical and experimental results demonstrated the proposed photo
thermal interferometric detection technique to be a sensitive photothe
rmal method for the study of the thermophysical properties of transpar
ent samples. Its applicability to weak absorption or spectroscopy meas
urement and microvolume trace analysis was also discussed. (C) 1996 Am
erican Institute of Physics.