Retrieving the thermal diffusivity and effusivity of solids from the same frequency scan using the front photopyroelectric technique

Abstract

The photopyroelectric (PPE) technique in the front configuration consists in illuminating one surface of a pyroelectric slab while the other surface is in contact with the test sample. This method has been widely used to measure the thermal effusivity of liquids. Recently, it has been extended to measure the thermal effusivity of solids, by taking into account the influence of the coupling fluid layer used to guarantee the thermal contact. In both cases, the sample (liquid or solid) must be very thick. In this work, we propose a classical frequency scan of a thin sample slab to retrieve the thermal diffusivity and effusivity simultaneously. We use the amplitude and the phase of the front PPE signal, which depend on four parameters: the sample diffusivity and effusivity, the coupling fluid thickness and the coefficient of heat losses. It is demonstrated that the four quantities are not correlated. PPE measurements performed on a set of calibrated solids confirm the ability of the method to obtain the thermal diffusivity and effusivity of solids accurately.