Measurement of the elastic properties of evaporated C60 films by surface acoustic waves

Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) pulses were excited in C₆₀ films deposited on quartz and silicon substrates using pulses from excimer lasers with wavelengths of 248 nm and 308 nm for excitation. An optical beam-deflection technique and polymer electret transducers were utilized to detect the propagation of the SAW pulse with high spatial and temporal resolution, allowing an accuracy of better than 0.1% for SAW velocity measurements. With this technique the frequency dependence of the SAW velocity was determined for a number of fullerite films and density, as well as elastic bulk properties of the films were derived by a theoretical analysis of the dispersion effect.