%0 Journal Article
%T Influence of Compression Loading on Acoustic Emission and Light Polarization Features in TeO2 Crystal.
%A Machikhin A
%A Chernov D
%A Khokhlov D
%A Marchenkov A
%A Bykov A
%A Eliovich Y
%A Petrov I
%A Balandin T
%A Kren A
%A Sergeev I
%A Pisarevsky Y
%J Materials (Basel)
%V 17
%N 14
%D 2024 Jul 20
%M 39063882
%F 3.748
%R 10.3390/ma17143590
%X Monitoring the processes inside crystalline materials under their operating conditions is of great interest in optoelectronics and scientific instrumentation. Early defect detection ensures the proper functioning of multiple crystal-based devices. In this study, a combination of acoustic emission (AE) sensing and cross-polarization imaging is proposed for the fast characterization of the crystal's structure. For the experiments, tellurium dioxide (TeO2) crystal was chosen due to its wide use in acousto-optics. Studies were performed under uniaxial compression loading with a simultaneous acquisition of AE signals and four polarized optical images. An analysis of the temporal dependencies of the AE data and two-dimensional maps of the light depolarization features was carried out in order to establish quantitative criteria for irreversible damage initiation and crack-like defect formation. The obtained results reveal the polarization image patterns and the AE pulse duration alteration specific to these processes, and they open up new possibilities for non-destructively monitoring in real-time the structure of optically transparent crystals under their operating conditions.