Theory of microstructural depth profiling by photothermal measurements

Abstract

An analytical solution for the photothermally measurable surface temperature of a sample with piecewise linearly inhomogeneous depth profile of the thermal conductivity k is presented. Based on this solution an inversion algorithm using a sequence of one-parameter fits is suggested in order to estimate the k profile. Numerical simulations demonstrate the performance of the approach and its insensitivity to random errors.