Apparent anisotropic thermal diffusivity measured in cubic single crystals by transient grating spectroscopy

The effect of elastic anisotropy on thermal diffusivity determination by transient grating spectroscopy (TGS) was studied. In experiments performed on a set of cubic single crystals, it was observed that TGS measurements may indicate anisotropy of thermal diffusivity in otherwise thermally isotropic materials, and that the strength of this apparent anisotropy is correlated with the strength of the elastic anisotropy. To find a source of the observed phenomenon, finite-element simulations of the TGS measurements were carried out. Time-domain TGS signals were generated from the simulations and processed identically to the experimental data. The simulation results revealed that the elastic anisotropy affects the detected time-domain signals. Consequently, the thermal diffusivity coefficients determined from them showed the artificial directional dependence. For the chosen set of cubic crystals, ranging from nearly isotropic to strongly anisotropic in terms of elastic constants, this simulated directional dependence was in full agreement with the one observed in the experiments.