The Greens function for surface acoustic waves: Comparison

between theory and experiment

A. Mourad, C. Desmet, W. Lauriks, H. Coufal,a) and J. Thoen
Laboratorium voor Akoestiek en Thermische Fysica, Departement Natuurkunde, Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium

~Received 21 February 1995; accepted for publication 23 May 1996!

The transient displacement of the surface acoustic wave caused by a transient impulse line source
on a sample consisting of a substrate covered by a thin layer is calculated. Starting from the Greens
tensor for an anisotropic semi-infinite half-space, the layer, which will introduce dispersion, is
considered as a perturbation of this half-space. Numerical results and experimental data, obtained
with an all-optical technique, for an isotropic layer on an isotropic half-space are compared and
show good agreement. 1996 Acoustical Society of America.
PACS numbers: 43.35.Pt @HEB#

INTRODUCTION ] 2G kp ] 2G ip
C i jkl 5r , ~1!
The problem of Lamb, as it was defined in his paper in ]x j]xl ]t2
1904,1 consisted of the calculation of the surface displace-
ment on an elastic, homogeneous, isotropic half-space, ]Gkp
C plkl 52 s p1 d ~ x 2 cos b 1x 3 sin b ! d ~ t ! , ~2!
caused by a linear force or point force at the free surface. ]xl
The use of more recent mathematical methods, like the
Cagniardde Hoop method,2,3 has allowed many authors to and

F G
solve the same problem for an anisotropic half-space.410
] G i j ] 2G i j
The solutions of these problems are the elements of the so- lim G i j , , 50, ~3!
called Greens tensor. In this paper, we have calculated this x 1 ` ] x k ] x 2k

Greens tensor in the case where an isotropic substrate is
covered by an isotropic thin layer. To do so, we have started
from the Greens function for a semi-infinite half-space.11 In
the second step, the layer is treated as a perturbation on the
half-space.12 For this particular problem, this is a simple al-
ternative approach to the work of Green13 in which his inte-
gral method14 is combined with the matrix method of
Mal.15,16 Our numerical results are compared with experi-
mental data. The experimental surface acoustic pulses were
excited by means of a pulsed KrF excimer laser and are
detected by a beam deflection technique.17 The sample under
investigation was a 0.3-mm-thick copper layer on a 1.05-
mm-thick steel substrate.
I. THEORY
The problem of Lamb for an anisotropic semi-infinite
half-space has been treated by many different authors. The
solutions are given by the Greens tensor G. We want to
investigate the change of the Greens tensor, when the half-
space is covered by a thin layer of thickness h and for a line
force. To do so, we first repeat the results obtained for a
semi-infinite half-space in order to introduce the usual nota-
tions.
Lets consider a semi-infinite half-space on which we
apply an impulsive line source at its free surface ~Fig. 1!.
This problem can be described by the following equations:6,7
a!
Permanent address: IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center,
650 Harry Road, San Jose, CA 95120-6099.
S D
]G
,G 50 for t<0. ~4!
]t
The first two equations are the wave equation and its bound-
ary conditions and the last two are the Sommerfeld criterion
and the causality condition, respectively. In these equations r
is the density of the material, b is the angle between the line
source and the x 3 coordinate, C i jkl are the elements of the
elasticity tensor, s is the stress tensor, and d (t) is the delta
function. The terms G i j are the components of the monopo-
lar Greens tensor G. They give us the displacement as a
function of x 1 , x 2 , x 3 , and t. If the time behavior of the
source is not given by a delta function but by a more general
function F(t) we will use the notation G Fi j . The components
of the dipolar Greens tensor are G i j,k .18 If we restrict our-
selves to an isotropic half-space,11 the orientation of the line
is no longer important ~we have chosen direction x 3 ! and the
elasticity tensor has only two independent elements. This
restriction was imposed by the choice of the sample. This
study can be generalized for an anisotropic layer on an an-
isotropic substrate. This will be the subject of further inves-
tigations. In our experiment, only the normal displacement is
probed. It is mainly caused by the surface acoustic wave
~see, e.g., Fig. 2!. The bulk wave displacements do not play
any significant role and will be neglected in what follows.
If the substrate is covered by a layer ~Fig. 3!, the SAW
~the so-called general Rayleigh19 wave! becomes dispersive.
For kh values much smaller than 1, with k the wave number
of the SAW and h the layer thickness, the dispersion can be
written analytically.12

1538 J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100 (3), September 1996 0001-4966/96/100(3)/1538/4/$10.00 1996 Acoustical Society of America 1538

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 FIG. 1. Geometry of the problem for an isotropic semi-infinite half-space.
Since in this approximation (kh!1) only the plate
mode s 0 is taken into account, we assume that the normal
surface displacement G 81 j can, in a good approximation, be
written as follows:20
G 81 j ~ 2h,x 2 ,t ! 52G 1 j ~ 0,x 2 ,t ! * D5G 1 j ~ 2h,x 2 ,t ! * D
~5!
and
G 81 j,k ~ 2h,x 2 ,t ! 52G 1 j,k ~ 0,x 2 ,t ! * D
5G 1 j,k ~ 2h,x 2 ,t ! * D. ~6!
The function D describes the dispersion and the exact shape
of the line with respect to the x 2 coordinate. If the line load
is given by the function P(x 2 )51/a for 2(a/2)<x 2 <(a/2)
and P(x 2 )50 elsewhere, then D can be written as
D5
2
p
E
0
` sin~ ka/2 !
ka/2
cos k @~ c p ~ k ! 2c R ! t2x 2 #
3H @ c g ~ k ! t2x 2 # dk, ~7!
with c R the Rayleigh wave velocity on the substrate. We
only took into account the waves propagating in the positive
x 2 direction and assumed that the dispersion is only caused
by the geometry of the problem, which means there is no
attenuation. Since the wave is stationary in the x 1 direction,
FIG. 2. Numerically calculated normal surface displacement on a steel half-
space as a function of time for a normal line source with a sourcereceiver
distance of 1 mm, F(t)5 d (t) and s1151 N m21.
1539 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 100, No. 3, September 1996
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FIG. 3. Geometry of the problem for a thin layer on a semi-infinite half-
space.
the cosine function only depends on the phase velocity
c p (k). The Heaviside function H describes the propagation
of the wave and is only a function of the group velocity
c g (k) of the wave [c g 5c p 1k(dc p /dk)]. In this way the
causality principle is respected. This aspect is not developed
here and is the subject of parallel work which will be pub-
lished elsewhere. We note that if there is no dispersion
(h0) D reduces to the spatial Fourier transform of the
function P and if additionally a0 we find
G 81 j (0,x 2 ,t)5G 1 j (0,x 2 ,t).
II. EXPERIMENTAL ARRANGEMENTS
A schematic diagram of the setup is shown in Fig. 4.
The laser pulses produced by a pulsed KrF excimer laser
type PSL4000 ~wavelength 248 nm! have approximately a
10-ps duration. The lightpulses are focused on the sample
surface by means of a cylindrical lens in order to obtain a
line source with a length of 1 cm and a width between 10 to
20 mm. The intensity is uniform over the whole area. The
detection of the SAW pulses is performed with a beam de-
flection setup with a bandwidth of about 500 MHz.17 By
mounting the prism and the cylindrical lens on a translation
stage ~precision of 1 mm!, the distance between source and
receiver can be changed.
FIG. 4. Schematic diagram of the experimental setup. Pquartz prism;
Llens; Mmirror; Ssample; BEbeam expander; CLcylindrical
lens; TStranslation state; PDphotodiodes.
Mourad et al.: Greens function for surface acoustic waves 1539
 The sample under investigation is a 0.3-mm-thick isotro-
pic copper layer ~r858.91 g/mm3; c L8 55010 m/s; c T8 52270
m/s! evaporated on a 1.05-m-thick isotropic steel substrate
~r57.9 g/mm3; c L 55790 m/s; c T 53100 m/s. The surface of
the sample is lapped and polished in order to obtain a good
reflection of the probe beam.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Since the SAW propagation time across the linefocus is
much larger than the laser pulse length ~about 10 ps!, the
assumption F(t)5 d (t) is valid. In our experiment the en-
ergy per pulse was around 10 mJ. Part of this energy is
absorbed which causes thermal expansion. Because of the
short pulse duration, this energy can also cause some abla-
tion of the sample surface. For this reason the experimental
Greens function of the substrate can be written as

12,2~ 0,x 2 ,t ! 1 ~ 12w ! G 11~ 0,x 2 ,t !# .

G exp~ 0,x 2 ,t ! } @ wG H
~8!
In this equation, G 11 is the contribution of the ablative re-
gime, modeled by an impulsive monopolar force normal to
the surface,21 while G H12,2 is the contribution of the ther-
moelastic regime, modeled by a dipole force with a
Heaviside-like time profile in the direction of
propagation,2224 and w is the weighting factor (0<w<1!
between these two contributions. With the beam deflection
setup described above we measure the slope of the surface
displacement. In the case of a layered substrate, this slope is
proportional to
]
1,22~ 2h,x 2 ,t ! 1 ~ 12w ! G 1,1~ 2h,x 2 ,t !# * D.
@ wG H
]x2
~9!
where D is defined in Eq. ~7!. Since the laser beam intensity
is uniform over the whole area, the function P, as defined
above, gives a good description of the laser beam profile.
The experimentally detected signals are shown in Fig.
5~a!, ~b!, and ~c!. The source to receiver distances are 1.15,
2.15, and 3.15 mm, respectively. The dispersion is clearly
visible at the two largest distances. The lower frequencies,
which propagate mainly in the substrate (c R 52875 m/s!,
have higher velocities than the higher frequencies, which
mainly propagate in the layer (c R 52130 m/s!. The numeri- FIG. 5. Experimentally measured ~solid lines! and numerically calculated
~dashed lines! SAW pulse for a source-to-receiver distance of 1.15 mm ~a!,
cally calculated results, given in the same figures with
2.15 mm, ~b!, and 3.15 mm ~c!.
dashed lines, were obtained by fitting the experimental sig-
nals with Eq. ~9! in which the parameters a and w were
varied. The elastic properties given in Sec. III were used. For With this Greens function we were able to calculate the
all three signals the best fit was obtained with the same set of transient time signal measured with a beam deflection setup.
parameters ~w50.75, a520 mm!, which proves that the Comparison between experimental and numerical results
function D is a good description of the dispersive behavior show a very good agreement.
caused by the geometry of the problem. The difference be-
tween the experimental and the theoretical signal at high ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
frequencies is due to the interference of the SAW with a bulk
wave reflected from the back of the surface. This work was supported by the Belgian National Sci-
ence Fund ~NFWO! through an FKFO project ~G.0115.95!.
Support from the Research Council of the Katholieke Uni-
IV. CONCLUSION
versiteit Leuven and from the NFWO in the form of a Fel-
We derived the approximate Greens function of the sur- lowship to one of use ~A. M.! is also gratefully acknowl-
face acoustic wave for a flat layersubstrate configuration. edged.

1540 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 100, No. 3, September 1996 Mourad et al.: Greens function for surface acoustic waves 1540

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1541 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 100, No. 3, September 1996 Mourad et al.: Greens function for surface acoustic waves 1541

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