The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of Nd:YAG laser irradiation on the phase velocity of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) of human enamel. A pulsed Nd:YAG laser at 1064 nm wavelength was used to irradiate the human enamel from extracted human premolars. The output power and repetition rate were 250 mJ and 5 Hz, respectively. The SAW phase velocities before and after laser irradiation were determined using a laser photoacoustic method. The laser-treated enamel surface exhibited a higher velocity value for frequencies higher than 3 MHz. The result of this study suggests that there is an important correlation between the elastic properties of human enamel and the pulsed Nd:YAG laser fluence, which increases the SAW phase velocity, and this may help shed some light on the mechanism of laser treatment in dental research.
A laser photoacoustic technique has been developed to evaluate the surface acoustic wave (SAW) velocity of porcelain. A Q-switched Nd:YAG laser at 1064 nm was focused by a cylindrical lens to initiate broadband SAW impulses, which were detected by an optical fiber interferometer with high spatial resolution. Multiple near-field surface acoustic waves were observed on the sample surface at various locations along the axis perpendicular to the laser line source as the detector moved away from the source in the same increments. The frequency spectrum and dispersion curves were obtained by operating on the recorded waveforms with cross-correlation and FFT. The SAW phase velocities of the porcelain of the same source are similar while they are different from those of different sources. The marked differences of Rayleigh phase velocities in our experiment suggest that this technique has the potential for porcelain identification.
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