Determination of sound velocity and acoustic impedance of thin chitosan films by phase-sensitive acoustic microscopy

Abstract

The biomaterial chitosan is used in the paper manufacturing industry, as a wound healing agent and in filtration amongst others. In this paper the longitudinal sound velocity and acoustic impedance of thin films of chitosan of varying thicknesses are determined by vector-contrast acoustic microscopy. The exploitation of the relative reflectivity information from the maximum amplitude images and a comparison of the experimentally obtained V(z) curves with simulations using appropriate models are applied for the evaluation of the sound velocity. These results were compared to those previously obtained results with the same instrument.