THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LASER-DRIVEN FLYER SYSTEM

M. W. Greenaway and J. E. Field

PCS Group, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom Abstract. This paper describes recent advances to a laser-driven flyer system. In this technique, laserinduced plasma is used to drive miniature flyer plates at velocities approaching 10 km/s. The flyers are launched from substrate-backed metal films and are typically less than 1 mm in diameter and a few microns thick. The system has found application in detonics, high-strain rate testing and micrometeorite simulation. Recent advances described here are concerned with manipulating the flyer profile and enhancing performance. A fiber-optic delivery system is used to alter the spatial intensity distribution of the launch pulse. High-speed photography was used to verify the effectiveness of this technique as illustrated by the excellent correlation between beam profile and flyer shape. A technique using bi-layered films was developed with a view to improving the energy efficiency of the system. The kinetic energy of flyers launched with the additional layer was found to be enhanced by a factor of near three. INTRODUCTION Lasers provide a convenient means for delivering large quantities of heat energy in a short period of time. Combined with a suitably absorbing material, high temperature plasma can be readily formed. A particularly attractive technique has emerged utilising laser-induced plasma to drive miniature flyer plates [1-3]. With a relatively simple laboratory system, flyers of millimetre diameter and micron thickness have been shown to achieve velocities approaching 10 km/s.
Plasma Incoming light pulse Flyer

At sufficient fluence, confined and laser-induced plasma can be formed between a supporting substrate and metallic film. The radiation is absorbed within a few skin depths and the remaining depth of film is driven off (Fig. 1). The laser spot size illuminating the metal film determines the overall fluence and flyer diameter. The key material properties influencing plasma formation include the optical absorption, reflectivity, vaporisation energy and the thermal properties of the irradiated material. The confined plasma acts as a driving force and a flyer shears away from the bulk film. An example flyer is shown in Fig. 2. This flyer is travelling right to left.

Metal film Substrate FIGURE 1. The formation of a laser-driven flyer plate. FIGURE 2. A high-speed photograph of a laser-driven flyer produced using the raw laser spot (scale bar is 50 ns).

CP706, Shock Compression of Condensed Matter - 2003, edited by M. D. Furnish, Y. M. Gupta, and J. W. Forbes 2004 American Institute of Physics 0-7354-0181-0/04/$22.00

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The laser energy, power, wavelength, pulse shape, pulse duration and spatial characteristics govern the overall energy coupling process and flyer formation. Energy coupling is one of the key mechanisms influencing the final kinetic energy of the flyer. In this research, ultimately successful efforts were made to improve the efficiency of this process. A semi-analytical model developed by Lawrence [4] showed the important of all the material properties. The use of confined laser-induced plasma to drive miniature flyer plates offers many advantages over conventional gas guns techniques; we have good control over all the flyer characteristics, alignment, little time is required between shots and target preparation is relatively straight-forward. In this paper, we principally describe two major advances to our laser-driven flyer system; the incorporation of a fiber-based delivery system to manipulate the flyer shape and the use of composite films to improve energy coupling to the system. EXPERIMENTAL At high optical power densities, materials that would be normally classed transparent, breakdown. A Detailed description of the fiber delivery system is given in Ref. 5 and summarised in the following. The fiber delivery system The delivery system attempted to distribute the optical energy from the laser pulse between the numerous possible propagation modes supported by the fiber. In effect, this smears the light spot to produce a more uniform spatial profile. Some negligible temporal broadening does occur. The fibre optic chosen for this study was Spectran HCL-M0365T. This fibre has a core diameter of 365 m and was selected for its high laser-induced damage threshold under testing with this system. A fibre of this type will support up to 104 modes. This value is determined by numerical aperture, core diameter and wavelength. The core diameter of the fibre was chosen to represent a workable damage threshold and useful fluence. A Spiricon Beam Analyser was used to monitor the profile of the output from the fibre. Previous

studies had shown that short lengths of fibre (~ 1 m) and moderate looping were highly effective at producing a top-hat light profile [6]. Fiber-launched flyers In these experiments, metal films were deposited by magnetron sputtering onto quartz substrates transparent to the 1064 nm Nd:YAG radiation. The substrates were 0.5 mm thick and 10 mm in diameter. Fused-silica optical fibres were used to deliver light pulses to the target substrate. Flyers were launched and photographed by an Imacon 790 high-speed camera. The flyer was launched from the substrate, allowed to travel a short distance (~ 10-4 m) and impact a transparent window. Through adiabatic processes, the impact event generates sufficient light for photography. A streak photograph of the impact event is taken by the camera looking head-on at the flyer (Fig. 3).
Launch substrate Tube Spring

Stand-off

Impact window

Mount (M)

FIGURE 3. Mount used for photographing flyer impacts.

A temporal fiducial was required for the purpose of making time-of-flight measurements. This was provided by using a second optical path and carefully illuminating the photographic film directly with the laser (Fig. 4). By matching the two optical path lengths, flyer launch is represented on the photographic record.

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approximately 60% faster than the equivalent M1 flyer in all cases. The obvious explanation is a difference in density; M2 is greater than 50% lighter than M1. It is important to remember that although the thin films (from which the flyers are launched) are of a well-defined depth, the thickness and hence volume of the actual flyer is dependant on material properties. In particular, the depth of film ablated to form plasma will be material dependent. However, in this optical power regime and for the purpose of comparing materials, it is reasonable to consider density as the key determinant of flyer mass. Considering kinetic energy and the fractional difference in density between the two materials, M2 flyers should travel 25% faster than M1. This assumes the same fraction of energy is coupled to the kinetic energy of the flyer and the linear dimensions of the flyers are the same in each case. Experiment revealed that M2 flyers travel approximately 60% faster than M1 flyers. Thus the difference in density only partially accounts for the difference in velocity between the two flyer materials. In an effort to better understand which material properties are key, bi-layered flyers were produced using M2 and M1 as the driving plasma and flyer respectively. The chosen depth of the ablation layer equates to about 10 skin depths.
500 M1 M2 C

driving M1 with a M2 ablation layer has a dramatic effect on the flyer velocity. Results similar to Fig. 6 were produced with greater thickness flyers but are not shown here. CONCLUSIONS This paper has described two important advances to a laser-driven flyer system. In the first, a fiber delivery system was shown to be highly affective at manipulating the spatial profile of the laser spot. A planar flyer was obtained was using 20 m long fibers. Bending and looping, mode scrambling and altering the injection optics were found to be ineffective. A second advance described how the inclusion of a thin ablation layer drastically increases the efficiency of the energy coupling process. An increase in velocity of over 50% was achieved with such bi-layered films. Our composite flyers with a thickness of circa 2 m and diameter 500 m reached a velocity of approximately 3.5 km/s with just 5 J/cm2. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was funded by AWE Aldermaston. Thanks go to Dr. W. G. Proud, Dr. S. G. Goveas and Mr. M. Bowden for useful discussions. REFERENCES

400 Distance / microns

300

200

100

0 0 50 100 Time / ns 150 200

FIGURE 6. Distance-time plot for flyers launched from three different films.

1. Trott, W. M. and Meeks, K. D., J. Appl. Phys. 67, 3297-3301 (1990). 2. Watson, S. and Field, J. E., J. Appl. Phys. 88, 38593864 (2000). 3. Roybal R et al., Int. J. Imp. Eng. 17, 707-718 (1995). 4. Lawrence, R. J. and Trott, W. M., Int. J. Impact Eng. 14, 439-449 (1993). 5. Greenaway, M. W. et al., Rev. Sci. Inst. 73 (5), 21852189 (2002). 6. Setchell, R. E., Proc. SPIE 2966, 608-619 (1997).

Fig. 6 shows some example data for 2 m thick launch films. The flyers (C) launched from the composite film are shown to travel at nearly the same velocity as the pure M2 flyers. It should be remembered that the actual flyer part of the composite is made up of M1. Thus, effectively

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