Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
ELECTROMAGNETIC GENERATION OF
ULTRASONIC WAVES IN METALS
E. ROLAND DOBBS
Department of Physics, University of Lancaster, Lancaster, England
Ahstract-The discovery, early development and theory of the electromagnetic generation of pure
shear and quasicompressional ultrasonic waves in metals is reviewed. It is shown that the four equa-
tions of Quinn lead to a satisfactory explanation of the periodic ionic displacements excited electro-
magnetically in metals in the presence of a static magnetic field over a wide range of temperature,
frequency and magnetic field. Recent measurements of resonant effects found in directly generated
shear waves in bismuth at helium temperatures are described. The giant quantum oscillations in the
generated signal have much larger amplitudes than those previously observed in the ultrasonic
attenuation, but similar periods. A low field resonance occurs in the generated signal at lo-50 MHz
and 30-70 G, where the magnetic field has a negligible effect on the attenuation. Applications of the
method to the generation of millimetre wave ultrasonics, to the non-destructive testing of metals and
to the study of the solid state are briefly considered.
1. INTRODUCTION and magnetic field large enough to make
THE GENERATION. of ultrasonic waves directly w,~ % 1, where O, = e BJmc is the cyclotron
from electromagnetic currents, without using frequency of the electrons of mass m, charge
a piezoelectric or magnetosrictive transducer, --e and relaxation time T. Thus acoustic
was discovered accidentally in Denmark by shear waves would only be generated under
Saermark and Larsen[l] early in 1967. They conditions for the propagation of helicon
were propagating helicons in an aluminum waves.
crystal at helium temperatures by placing a In the spring of 1967 Houck, Bohm,
small coil on each side of an aluminum disk Maxfield and Wilkins [2] at Cornell University
(the size of a dime), exciting one coil at l-2 made a ‘transducer’ from the new effect
MHz and observing the signal received in the by bonding a metal disk of aluminum to one
second coil as the magnetic field produced by end of a delay rod of quartz and detecting the
a superconducting solenoid around the system shear waves with an AC-cut quartz at the
was increased from lo-40 kG. To their other end. They showed that the ‘transducer’
surprise, sets of acoustic standing waves were would work in a non-resonant mode through
generated corresponding to the diameter and r.f. generation at the surface of the aluminum
thickness of the disk. As these were size- disk over a wide range of magnetic fields.
controlled, they were sharp resonances and Further, they proved that the interaction
the acoustic resonator had a Q larger than 104, producing the shear waves operated at
so that a highly stable frequency source was magnetic fields well away from the ‘cross-
necessary for the observations. The re- over’ point where the phase velocities of the
sonances were superimposed on helicon helicon modes and the shear vibrations
waves and were shown to be helicon- coincide.
acoustic modes. Then I am glad to say Professor Bohm
The conditions for the production of these spent the Summer with us at Lancaster and
shear waves seemed very restrictive: helium with him, Betjemann, Meredith and 1[3]
temperatures, static magnetic field vector showed that the restrictive conditions for the
B0 parallel to the ultrasonic wave vector q production of ultrasonic waves electromagne-
I657
1658 E. ROLAND DOBBS
num rod at room temperature as it did in an face along the cylindrical axis Oz. The
aluminum single crystal at helium tempera- delayed output from a suitable quartz trans-
tures. Evidently it was a classical effect and ducer bonded to the other flat face was then
we concluded that the Lorentz force on the amplified and displayed. The sensitivity
electronic current in the skin depth was of this coil-resonant transducer system was
responsible for the generation. such that in a field of 10 kG the signal to noise
Before describing our experiments I must ratio was about 50: 1 for room temperature
mention the interesting result of Abeles[4], measurements in a tin crystal. This was
who showed that at 9.3 GHz electromagnetic substantially greater than using a coil-coil
generation and detection of shear waves was system and so was preferred for the early
possible in the absence of a static magnetic experiments.
field in a very clean, thin film of indium, The polarization of the generated sound
evaporated on to an optically polished surface wave was found to depend on the relative
of a crystal rod of pure germanium, and placed orientation of the propagation direction q
in a microwave cavity at helium temperatures. and the static field B,,. In Fig. 2(a) with the
The minimum conditions for electromagnetic helicon geometry the ionic motion was
generation of ultrasonic waves in metals are 5, and so a shear wave was propagated and
evidently either helium temperatures and no detected by a suitably oriented AC-cut
magnetic field or a steady magnetic field (of quartz. No compressional wave was detected
a few kilogauss in practice) at any tempera- when the AC-cut quartz was replaced by an
ture. X-cut. However, when the system was
placed in an electromagnet with B,,normal
2. EXPERIMENTAL to q and parallel to the applied r.f. field B, as
The experimental arrangement we have shown in Fig. 2(b), a compressional wave
used for making measurements on the was detected with the X-cut quartz. With
electromagnetic generation of shear waves this geometry, shear waves were also genera-
is shown in outline in Fig. 1. A conventional ted when the AC-cut quartz was oriented to
pulsed ultrasonic system operating at 10 or detect 4,.
15 MHz drives a small, flattened coil placed To verify that the shear waves have a
close to the plane face of a cylindrical metal preferred polarization direction in the helicon
sample, so than an r.f. magnetic field is genera- geometry, we studied the signal amplitude as
ted at the surface of the metal. When a static, the coil was rotated- this was easy at room
solenoidal field B, of a few kilogauss was temperature -about Oz. Using a long tin
applied to the sample from an external magnet, sample, maximum amplitude was recorded
a shear wave was excited at the metal surface when the coil was parallel to Ox and zero
within the electromagnetic skin depth. The amplitude when it was perpendicular to Ox,
sample geometry ensures that at megahertz as expected. The effect on the amplitude
frequencies, where the acoustic wavelength A, of the compressional signal of rotating B
is much less than the diameter of the rod, in the plane of the surface of the sample,
a plane wave propagates normal to the flat with B, fixed along Ox, is shown in Fig. 3.
ELECTROMAGNETIC GENERATION OF ULTRASONIC WAVES IN METALS 1659
Fig. 2. Sample, coil and magnetic field orientations for generating and detecting
ultrasonic waves. (Upper) Shear waves, (Lower) quasi-compressional waves.
3. THEORETICAL
/’ u
o/= A At the same time as we[3] published our
Oi preliminary results, Quinn [ IO] published, as
o /&A
Ii he put it, the ‘four equations which describe
O/A
completely the physics of the problem in
the general case’. The problem is to find wave
solutions of the ionic displacements e given
by
‘II
0 O 5=&expi(ot-q.r).
20 LO 60 90 100
Mqnctic Fiatd 9,~ IkG)
Fig. 5. Change in relative attenuation of shear waves in Following Mattis and Dresselhaus [ 1 l] the
Nb (I 11) at 77 K as a function of magnetic field B,. metal sample is considered to occupy the
half-space z > 0, and to conserve electrons
expect that compressional waves could we suppose that its mirror image occupies
similarly be generated by ultra high frequen- the half-space z < 0. This is equivalent to
cies. Thomas et al. also used two identical assuming that the conduction electrons are
pairs of Helmholtz coils, arranged to have reflected specularly at the surface, which is
their axes mutually orthogonal and lying in the simple, and satisfactory when the electronic
plane of the surface, to produce both left-hand mean free path is much less than the acoustic
and right-hand, circularly polarized, 10 MHz wavelength. It can then be shown[5,1 l]
waves at 4.2 and 77 K in an aluminum rod. that the total electric current J is the sum of
Such circular modes cannot easily be genera- the ionic current n,e&, the electronic current
ted with quartz transducers, although j, and the fictitious surface current jo, so that
Einspruch [8] has proposed a generator based
on a quarter-wave plate. J = in,ew5+ j,+ j, (1)
ELECTROMAGNETIC GENERATION OF ULTRASONIC WAVES IN METALS 1661
where there are IZ,,conduction electrons per where C1 and C, are elastic moduli for
unit volume. compressional and shear waves associated
Maxwell’s equations [ 10, 121 may be with the short range forces between ions and
written in the form the last two terms are the collision drag force.
The wave solution &I) in the bulk metal
J(q,o) = I-‘. E(q,o) (2) required is found for each geometry by
eliminating J, E and j, between the four
where the electric conductivity tensor I equations. The simplest solution, for the
is given by helicon geometry, was given by Quinn
200
150
(b)
Fig. 10. Ultrasonic signals seen in bismuth at helium
temperatures with low magnetic fields, using the experi-
mental arrangement of Fig. 1. (a) At 30 G the large slow
shear resonance marked at 7’ produces its own reflection
at 37’. Also present are the fast shear signal at t and its
two reflections at 3t and 5r, off resonance, and a piezo-
electric signal at 27’ from the quartz transducer. (b)
At 10 G the slow shear signal is OK resonance, the fast
shear signals have disappeared, but the piezoetectric
signal (marked) is unchanged, since there is a negligible
change in the attenuation with magnetic field.
has shown that for frequencies above 40 3. BETJEMANN A. G., BOHM H. V., MEREDITH
D. J. and DOBBS E. R., Phys. Lett. 25A, 753 (1967).
GHz this technique, or a modification of it
4. ABELES B., Phys. Rev. Lett. 19, 1181, (1967).
using multilayer transducers, may be the most 5. MEREDITH D. J., WATTS-TOBIN R. J. and
efficient way of producing sound from DOBBS E. R..J. acoust. Sot. Am. 45.1393 (1969).
millimetre wavelength electromagnetic waves. 6. ALPHER R. ‘A. and RUBIN R. J.,‘J. acoust. sot.
Am. 26,452 (1954).
Perhaps this technique will be used to 7. THOMAS R. L., TURNER G. and BOHM H. V.,
generate phonons at thermal frequencies. Phys. Rev. Lett. 20,207 (1968).
8. EINSPRUCH, N., J. acoust. Sot. Am. 36, 971
In conclusion I would like to emphasize ( 1964).
that most of the effects that have been 9. GAERTTNER M. R., WALLACE W. D. and
studied in the past by measuring small changes MAXFlELD B. W., Phys. Rev. 184,702 (1969).
10. QUINN J. J., Phys. Lett. 25A, 522 (1967).
in ultrasonic attenuation could well be
11. MATTIS D. C. and DRESSELHAUS G., Phys.
dramatically enhanced in the electromagne- Rev. 111,403 (1958).
tically generated signals, as we have found in 12. RODRIGUEZ S.. Phvs. Rev. 130, 1778 (1963).
the giant quantum oscillations in bismuth. 13. COHEN M. H., HARRISON M. J. and HARRI-
SON W. A. Phys. Rev. 117,937 (1960).
Although a static magnetic field is required 14. SOUTHGATE P. D., J. appl. Phys. 40, 22 (1969).
at room temperature, several authors [4, 15. ALIG C. R., Phys. Rev. 178,105O (1969).
16. GUREVICH V. L., SKOBOV V. G. and FIRSOV
25,261 have shown that this is not necessary Yu. A., Zh. eksp. teor. Fiz. 40,786 (1961).
at helium temperatures in pure metals. There 17. TOXEN A. M. and TANSAL S., Phys. Rev. 137A,
are thus many interesting possibilities for 211 (1965).
further studies on solids. 18. MASE S.. FUJIMOVI Y. and MAR1 H., J. .whys. .
Soc.JapanZl, 1744(1966).
19. KOROLYUK A. P.. Zh. eksv. teor. Fiz. 51. 697
Acknowledgements-It gives me much pleasure to thank (1966); English transl. Soviet ‘Phys. JET; 24; 461
Professor C. Elbaum for inviting me to present this (1967).
paper at Brown University, Rhode Island. It was written 20. GUIRA M., MARCON R., PAPA T. and WAN-
while the author was a summer visitor at the Department DERLINGH F.. Phvs. Rev. 179.645 (1969).
of Physics, Wayne State University, and it is a pleasure 21. DOBBS E. R.,’ THOMAS Rl L. and ‘HSU D.
to thank Dr. R. L. Thomas and D. Hsu for their collabora- Phys. Lett. 30A, 338 (1969).
tion on the measurements in bismuth, Dr. G. Turner and 22. COHEN M. H. and BLOUNT E. I., Phil. Mag.
Dr. N. Tepley for helpful discussions and Vice-President 5, 115 (1960).
H. V. Bohm for the invitation to Detroit. My thanks are 23. LEGG K. 0. and MEREDITH D. J., (To be
also due to Dr. D. J. Meredith and K. 0. Legg for kindly published.)
supplying me with details of their recent experiments at 24. WALLACE w. D., HOUCK J. R., BOWERS R.,
Lancaster prior to publication. MAXFIELD B. W. and GAERTTNER M. R.
Rev. scient. fnstrum. 39,1863 (1968).
REFERENCES 25. WALLACE W. D., GAERTTNER M. R. and
1. SAERMARK K. and LARSEN P. K., Phys. Lett. MAXFIELD B. W., Bull. Am. phys. Sot. 14, 64
24A, 374 and 668 (1967). ( 1969).
2. HOUCK J. R., BOHM H. V., MAXFIELD B. W. 26. THOMAS R. L., TURNER G. and HSU D., Phys.
and WILKINS J. W., Phys. Rev. Lett. 19,224 (1967). Lett. 30A, 3 16 (1969).