Thermal diffusivity measurement based on evaporative cryocooling excitation: Theory and experiments

Abstract: Photo-thermal methods for measuring thermal diffusivity inherently pose an ill-posed inverse problem, affected by factors such as sample thickness, heating or cooling time, and excitation energy. Measurement accuracy becomes particularly challenging under non-impulsive pulsed excitation when the observation timescale is comparable to the pulse duration. This is often due to poorly defined pulse shapes, broadened thermal responses, and the absence of clear boundary conditions, especially under significant interfacial temperature gradients where natural convection dominates. The classic Parker solution, while widely used, is physically unrealistic as it assumes adiabatic heat flux and shallow-region heat absorption. In this study, we prove that Parker's assumption is equivalent to the Dirac pulse boundary condition in mathematics. Then, we present comprehensive analytical solutions for thermal/cooling responses under Dirac and rectangular pulse excitations. By comparing with eigenfunction-based solutions for well-posed boundary conditions, we show that Parker's solution is only valid before the thermal peak. Through dimensionless processing, we further demonstrate that Parker's solution can be regarded as a limiting case of the rectangular pulse solution as the heating duration approaches zero. Furthermore, we propose a novel excitation approach, evaporative cryocooling, for thermal diffusivity measurement. This method offers a compact, low-cost, and easy-to-implement alternative to conventional excitation schemes. The theoretical model was further validated through comparison with experimental results.