Thermal Lens Study of NIR Femtosecond Laser-Induced Convection in Alcohols

Abstract

We use time-resolved thermal lens (TL) experiments to examine the convective heat transfer at microscale in the first eight members of the homologous series of primary alcohols. TL measurements enable a direct study of these primary alcohols without adding any chromophore as a function of varying heat loads created via femtosecond laser pulses at 1560 nm. Convective heat transfer leads to the asymmetrical and reduced thermal gradient, which substantially weakens the TL signal. The inflection in the time profile of the TL signal of methanol at higher powers is attributed to the greater molecular convection in methanol compared to other samples. This inflection dies out with a decrease in laser power. Our results demonstrate that the convection is more prominent at higher laser powers in all samples, and it modifies the trend in the steady-state TL signal of different alcohols with pump laser power. Methanol also has the highest steady-state TL among the primary alcohol series at low laser powers. The maxima in the TL signal are shifted systematically from methanol to ethanol and then to propanol as the laser power increases. Semiempirical analysis of time-resolved TL signal by using the latest theoretical TL model enabled us to extract the coefficient of convective heat transfer in methanol at different laser powers. In addition to that, analysis of other members of alcohol series at the highest (7.3 mW) laser power shows that convection is more facile in short-chain alcohols compared to the long-chain alcohols.