Structured illumination with infrared imaging for measuring thermal conductivity

Abstract

With developments in advanced manufacturing and materials by design comes the need for high-throughput thermal characterization and inspection. Towards this end, Structured Illumination with Thermal Imaging (SITI) is an all-optical pump-probe thermal characterization technique recently developed by our group. In the first generation [Zheng et al., Appl. Phys. Rev. 9, 021411 (2022)] SITI uses an LED with a digital micromirror device (DMD) to “structurally illuminate” and heat the sample with dynamic patterns, a visible light camera for thermoreflectance based “thermal imaging” [leveraging a Microsanj MTIR120], and the resultant temperature response was fit with a thermal model to characterize the sample’s thermal properties. This represents a novel approach to dynamic and flexible spatial mapping of thermal properties by virtue of being a non-contact technique and having a simpler scanning means (computer control only) than conventional pump-probe laser methods. SITI also can tolerate rough samples with diffuse reflections. This talk presents the second generation of SITI. The pumping is now based on a lower cost off-the-shelf digital projector. The thermometry is now performed using an infrared (IR) camera, which we find is a more flexible and accessible hardware approach compared to the thermoreflectance microscopy used previously. With these updates the setup can deliver higher heating power and a broader range of frequencies, allowing an extended range of samples that can be studied. We have demonstrated SITI’s ability to measure the thermal conductivity of a microscope glass slide.