Key signal contributions in photothermal deflection spectroscopy

authored by: Walter Dickmann, Johannes Dickmann, Florian Feilong Bruns, Stefanie Kroker
Abstract: We report on key signal contributions in photothermal deflection spectroscopy (PDS) of semiconductors at photon energies below the bandgap energy and show how to extract the actual absorption properties from the measurement data. To this end, we establish a rigorous computation scheme for the deflection signal including semianalytic ray tracing to analyze the underlying physical effects. The computation takes into account linear and nonlinear absorption processes affecting the refractive index, thus leading to a deflection of the probe beam. We find that besides the linear mirage effect, nonlinear absorption mechanisms make a substantial contribution to the signal for strongly focused pump beams and sample materials with high two-photon absorption coefficients. For example, the measured quadratic absorption contribution exceeds 5% at a pump beam intensity of about 1.3 × 10 5 W / c m 2 in Si and at 5 × 10 4 W / c m 2 in GaAs. In addition, our method also includes thermal expansion effects as well as spatial gradients of the attenuation properties. We demonstrate that these effects result in an additional deflection contribution that substantially depends on the distance of the photodetector from the readout point. This distance dependent contribution enhances the surface related PDS signal up to two orders of magnitude and may be misinterpreted as surface absorption if not corrected in the analysis of the measurement data. We verify these findings by PDS measurements on crystalline silicon at a wavelength of 1550 nm and provide guidelines on how to extract the actual attenuation coefficient from the PDS signal.
External Organisation(s): Technische Universität Braunschweig
National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB)
Type: Article
Journal: Journal of applied physics
Volume: 126
ISSN: 0021-8979
Publication date: 14.07.2019
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Physics and Astronomy(all)
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5098304 (Access: Open)

BibTeX

@article{51eb1e1386514055a5d92f058f657652,
title = "Key signal contributions in photothermal deflection spectroscopy",
abstract = "We report on key signal contributions in photothermal deflection spectroscopy (PDS) of semiconductors at photon energies below the bandgap energy and show how to extract the actual absorption properties from the measurement data. To this end, we establish a rigorous computation scheme for the deflection signal including semianalytic ray tracing to analyze the underlying physical effects. The computation takes into account linear and nonlinear absorption processes affecting the refractive index, thus leading to a deflection of the probe beam. We find that besides the linear mirage effect, nonlinear absorption mechanisms make a substantial contribution to the signal for strongly focused pump beams and sample materials with high two-photon absorption coefficients. For example, the measured quadratic absorption contribution exceeds 5% at a pump beam intensity of about 1.3 × 10 5 W / c m 2 in Si and at 5 × 10 4 W / c m 2 in GaAs. In addition, our method also includes thermal expansion effects as well as spatial gradients of the attenuation properties. We demonstrate that these effects result in an additional deflection contribution that substantially depends on the distance of the photodetector from the readout point. This distance dependent contribution enhances the surface related PDS signal up to two orders of magnitude and may be misinterpreted as surface absorption if not corrected in the analysis of the measurement data. We verify these findings by PDS measurements on crystalline silicon at a wavelength of 1550 nm and provide guidelines on how to extract the actual attenuation coefficient from the PDS signal.",
author = "Walter Dickmann and Johannes Dickmann and Bruns, {Florian Feilong} and Stefanie Kroker",
note = "Funding information: The authors gratefully acknowledge support by the Braunschweig International Graduate School of Metrology B-IGSM and the DFG Research Training Group GrK1952/1 “Metrology for Complex Nanosystems.”",
year = "2019",
month = jul,
day = "14",
doi = "10.1063/1.5098304",
language = "English",
volume = "126",
journal = "Journal of applied physics",
issn = "0021-8979",
publisher = "American Institute of Physics",
number = "2",
}