LASER-BASED TRANSIENT SURFACE ACCELERATION OF THERMOELASTIC LAYERS

The removal of particles from elastic substrates has been an important practical problem in the electronics industry especially as the sizes of electronic units shrink. In recent years, there has been an interest in removingsubmicron level particles from surfaces. The use of traditional surface cleaning methods, such as ultrasonically induced fluid flow, vibrational methods, centrifugal techniques, is limited to particles that require surface acceleration lower than 107m/s2. For the effective removal of submicron particles, a higher level surface acceleration is needed since the adhesion forces (mainly van der Waals force for dry surfaces) are related to the particle size and increase approximately linearly as the characteristic radius of small particles that are to be removed decreases. In current work, based on the generalized dynamic theory of thermoelasticity reported, a transfer matrix formulation including the second sound effect is developed for a thermoelastic layer. The transfer matrix for axisymmetric wave propagation in a thermoelastic layer is obtained by adopting a double integral transform approach. The second sound effect is included to eliminate the thermal wave travelling with infinite velocity as predicted by the diffusion heat transfer model, and, consequently, the immediate arrival of waves. Using the current formulation and the periodic systems framework, a transfer function formulation for calculating the accelerations is developed for transient analysis. A double integral transform inversion method is used for transient response calculations. Acceleration levels, sufficient for submicron particle removal, are reported. Various processes such as thermoelastic stresses, surface evaporation, and optical breakdown may be responsible for surface acceleration components and particle removal. In current work, only the surface acceleration due to transient thermoelastic wave propagation is under investigation.