Thermal effect in laser-HgCdTe interaction

A two-dimensional thermal conducting model which deals with the thermal diffusion in continuous wave (cw) laser processing of material is presented in this paper. The temperature distribution during the interaction between HgCdTe and cw carbon dioxide laser is calculated using numerical method. Experiment is carried out to measure the damage threshold of HgCdTe with cw CO2 laser. The apparent damage temperature threshold, 670 - 680 K is obtained which corresponds to the solid-solid phase transition of HgCdTe. All the calculations are in good agreement with the experimental results.