Quantitative emission from femtosecond microplasmas for laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Abstract

An ongoing study of the scaling of Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to microjoule pulse energies is being conducted to quantify the LIBS process. The use of microplasmas for LIBS requires good understanding of the emission scaling in order to maximize the sensitivity of the LIBS technique at low energies. The quantitative scaling of emission of Al, Cu and Si microplasmas from 100 μJ down to 100 nJ is presented. The scaling of line emission from major and minor constituents in Al 5052 alloy is investigated and evaluated for analytical LIBS. Ablated crater volume scaling and emission efficiency for Si microplasmas are investigated. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd.