Thermal Depth Profiling Reconstruction by Multilayer Thermal Quadrupole Modeling and Particle Swarm Optimization

A new hybrid inversion method for depth profiling reconstruction of thermal conductivities of inhomogeneous solids is proposed based on multilayer quadrupole formalism of thermal waves, particle swarm optimization and sequential quadratic programming. The reconstruction simulations for several thermal conductivity profiles are performed to evaluate the applicability of the method. The numerical simulations demonstrate that the precision and insensitivity to noise of the inversion method are very satisfactory. (condensed matter: structure, mechanical and thermal properties)