A non-destructive inspection system using 50MHz ultrasound has been developed. The system has been designed to provide magnified visual images of the interior of solid materials. An ultrasonic transducer is scanned across the specimen to produce these images and consequently the system has become known as the Scanning Acoustic Microscope (SAM). The principles of operation of the SAM have been described in terms of wave theory and the electronic and computer sub-systems of which it is comprised. Images are presented on a computer monitor in eight colours. The colour of each picture point, or pixel, is determined by the amplitude of a reflection from the specimen. As the transducer scans in a raster pattern over the specimen a video cursor scans over the video memory in the computer and each pixel is coloured in turn. Thus the image is built up in real time as the transducer is scanned. The maximum range of scan is 300 x 300iran in the horizontal plane and 200mm vertically. The spatial resolution in all three axes is 7.5 microns. Applications in several areas of engineering and one medical area have been developed. The underlying principles of each inspection situation are described and results reported. These areas include inspection and evaluation of various forms of bond, volumetric inspection, particularly of engineering ceramic materials and the skin, and a measurement problem in the gas turbine industry. All the work reported has been undertaken on behalf of customers of Fulmer Research Institute Limited and it therefore represents a series of practical problems and solutions across a wide spectrum of industry.

With the gain in momentum of the structural health monitoring field in the last two decades, the popularity of ultrasonic nondestructive testing (NDT) has grown. However, ultrasonic NDT requires an expert to perform the testing and can be time consuming and costly when measured wave patterns in testing become extremely complex. A computer simulation of these tests can be utilized as a guide during actual evaluations or as a tool to train technicians. Presented in this dissertation is the development of models which simulate such acoustic phenomena as may arise in NDT. These models were developed using the distributed point source method (DPSM) for its proven capability to represent ultrasonic fields.Four sets of boundary conditions that arise from different types of commonly used acoustic transducers are modeled, enabling the visualization of the ultrasonic fields produced by the transducers. The transducer models exhibit good agreement with existing analytical solutions.In addition, the effect of a small cavity located at or near the focal point of an acoustic microscope is discussed. For this application the DPSM technique is modified so that inversion of a large global matrix is avoided, significantly improving the computational efficiency. The model shows that, as the pressure goes to zero, the velocity increases at the location of a cavity. Simulations demonstrate that the microscope is able to sense changes in position of the cavity by variations in the measured ratio of reflected to incident acoustic force.The field generated by an interferometric acoustic microscope is also presented. Qualitative agreement between the DPSM model and the experimental results of fields generated in a homogeneous fluid are obtained for a three-element lens. In the presence of a solid interface, the pressure on the edges of a converging beam near the fluid-solid interface is greater for a three-element lens than for single-element lens. A multi-element lens is also shown to exhibit oscillations in the pressure slightly above the interface.

The rapid growth of the microelectronics industry in the last decades made it possible to produce structures in the sub-micrometer scale on silicon chips and to reach an integration scale under 100 nm. Decreasing the size and increasing the complexity of these structures make a control of quality and defects investigation more difficult. During a long time ultrasound devices are being used for nondestructive investigation of materials, like ultrasound microscopes, scanning photo-acoustic microscopes or scanning electron-acoustic microscopes, where acoustic waves are generated by acoustic transducers, focused laser or electron beams, respectively. The aim of this work is to investigate more precisely the acoustic wave generation by pulsed and periodically modulated ion beams in different solid materials depending on the beam parameters and to demonstrate the possibility to apply an intensity modulated focused ion beam (FIB) for acoustic emission and for nondestructive investigation of the internal structure of materials on a microscopic scale. The combination of a FIB and an ultrasound microscope in one device can provide the opportunity of nondestructive investigation, production and modification of micro- and nanostructures simultaneously. The FIB spot size in modern systems is comparable with that of a focused electron beam and the penetration depth of ions with energy of 20-60 keV is lower than 100 nm. This makes it possible to reach a sub-micrometer resolution of a scanning ion acoustic microscope. On the other hand side a FIB with energy of 20-60 keV is a good tool which can be used for the fabrication of nanostructures using ion milling, implantation or ion beam assisted deposition techniques. The bulk ultrasound emission in a solid was investigated using a pulsed high energy ion beam focused on aluminum, copper, iron and silicon samples. Oxygen, silicon and gold ion beams were applied in charge states from 1+ to 4+ with the pulse duration of 0.5 - 4 µs and an energy of 1.5 - 10 MeV. Intensity of the detected acoustic waves shows a linear dependence on the energy of the incident ions, on the ion flux as well as on the pulse duration. No influence of the ion charge and ion mass to the emission of acoustic waves was observed. The ion acoustic effect was applied for a nondestructive material inspection using intensity modulated FIB providing by the IMSA-100 FIB system with an accelerating potential of 30-35 kV. The achieved lateral resolution of this scanning ion acoustic microscope is in the micrometer range depending on the sample material and the beam modulation frequency. The resolution can be improved by increasing the frequency. The maximal modulation frequency which was obtained at IMSA-100 is about 2 MHz corresponding to lateral resolution of 4-5 µm on silicon. Using this microscope, some images of integrated microstructures on a silicon chip were obtained using the lock-in technique for filtering of the signal from the noise and increasing of the total imaging time. The possibility to visualize near sub-surface structure was demonstrated. Due to the strong sputtering effect and the long time of irradiation the imaged structures were significantly damaged. Si2+, Ge2+, Ga+ and Au+ ions were used. All these ions are quite heavy and have high sputtering coefficients. Long-time imaging improves the quality of acoustic images, i. e. the signal-to-noise ratio is reduced with the square root from the pixel time, but leads to significant erosion of the imaged structure.

The rapid growth of the microelectronics industry in the last decades made it possible to produce structures in the sub-micrometer scale on silicon chips and to reach an integration scale under 100 nm. Decreasing the size and increasing the complexity of these structures make a control of quality and defects investigation more difficult. During a long time ultrasound devices are being used for nondestructive investigation of materials, like ultrasound microscopes, scanning photo-acoustic microscopes or scanning electron-acoustic microscopes, where acoustic waves are generated by acoustic transducers, focused laser or electron beams, respectively. The aim of this work is to investigate more precisely the acoustic wave generation by pulsed and periodically modulated ion beams in different solid materials depending on the beam parameters and to demonstrate the possibility to apply an intensity modulated focused ion beam (FIB) for acoustic emission and for nondestructive investigation of the internal structure of materials on a microscopic scale. The combination of a FIB and an ultrasound microscope in one device can provide the opportunity of nondestructive investigation, production and modification of micro- and nanostructures simultaneously. The FIB spot size in modern systems is comparable with that of a focused electron beam and the penetration depth of ions with energy of 20-60 keV is lower than 100 nm. This makes it possible to reach a sub-micrometer resolution of a scanning ion acoustic microscope. On the other hand side a FIB with energy of 20-60 keV is a good tool which can be used for the fabrication of nanostructures using ion milling, implantation or ion beam assisted deposition techniques. The bulk ultrasound emission in a solid was investigated using a pulsed high energy ion beam focused on aluminum, copper, iron and silicon samples. Oxygen, silicon and gold ion beams were applied in charge states from 1+ to 4+ with the pulse duration of 0.5 - 4 µs and an energy of 1.5 - 10 MeV. Intensity of the detected acoustic waves shows a linear dependence on the energy of the incident ions, on the ion flux as well as on the pulse duration. No influence of the ion charge and ion mass to the emission of acoustic waves was observed. The ion acoustic effect was applied for a nondestructive material inspection using intensity modulated FIB providing by the IMSA-100 FIB system with an accelerating potential of 30-35 kV. The achieved lateral resolution of this scanning ion acoustic microscope is in the micrometer range depending on the sample material and the beam modulation frequency. The resolution can be improved by increasing the frequency. The maximal modulation frequency which was obtained at IMSA-100 is about 2 MHz corresponding to lateral resolution of 4-5 µm on silicon. Using this microscope, some images of integrated microstructures on a silicon chip were obtained using the lock-in technique for filtering of the signal from the noise and increasing of the total imaging time. The possibility to visualize near sub-surface structure was demonstrated. Due to the strong sputtering effect and the long time of irradiation the imaged structures were significantly damaged. Si2+, Ge2+, Ga+ and Au+ ions were used. All these ions are quite heavy and have high sputtering coefficients. Long-time imaging improves the quality of acoustic images, i. e. the signal-to-noise ratio is reduced with the square root from the pixel time, but leads to significant erosion of the imaged structure.