Rheology of chalcogenide glasses under light irradiation
Résumé
Chalcogenide glasses undergo various photoinduced effects under light irradiation in their band-gap and
subband-gap range (refractive index, density, band-gap energy changes…). More specifically, the viscosity
of these glasses can be tuned only by playing with the irradiation conditions, without any temperature
increase. Because the photoinduced viscosity change (“photofluidity”) is athermal, it could allow glass
forming at a micrometer scale (the size of a laser spot), and without risk of crystallization. Nevertheless, the
photofluidity is poorly understood up to now, especially because few methods exist to properly assess the
rheological properties under light irradiation. First because photoinduced changes occurs within time scales
shorter than the time required to measure viscoelastic properties by static methods (creep or relaxation tests).
Secondly, because we can assume that the light is homogeneously absorbed (and thus, the mechanical
properties homogeneously changed) along the thickness of the glass only if its dimensions are very thin
regarding the light absorption coefficient. We proposed here a dynamical method to track the kinetic of these
change in glass thin films under light cycles. We describe here this method and investigate the influence of
the wavelength and the power of the light source on the viscoelastic properties. We analyze the kinetic of the
evolution of these properties and the influence of the glass composition.