Influence of Compression Loading on Acoustic Emission and Light Polarization Features in TeO 2 Crystal

• Published in: Materials 2024-07, Vol.17 (14)
• Main Authors: Machikhin, Alexander, Chernov, Dmitry, Khokhlov, Demid, Marchenkov, Artem, Bykov, Alexey, Eliovich, Yan, Petrov, Ivan, Balandin, Timofey, Kren, Alexander, Sergeev, Ilya, Pisarevsky, Yuri
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1996-1944; 1996-1944

Monitoring the processes inside crystalline materials under their operating conditions is of great interest in optoelectronics and scientific instrumentation. Early defect detection ensures the proper functioning of multiple crystal-based devices. In this study, a combination of acoustic emission (AE) sensing and cross-polarization imaging is proposed for the fast characterization of the crystal's structure. For the experiments, tellurium dioxide (TeO ) crystal was chosen due to its wide use in acousto-optics. Studies were performed under uniaxial compression loading with a simultaneous acquisition of AE signals and four polarized optical images. An analysis of the temporal dependencies of the AE data and two-dimensional maps of the light depolarization features was carried out in order to establish quantitative criteria for irreversible damage initiation and crack-like defect formation. The obtained results reveal the polarization image patterns and the AE pulse duration alteration specific to these processes, and they open up new possibilities for non-destructively monitoring in real-time the structure of optically transparent crystals under their operating conditions.