This study aims to determine lifetimes of species in the laser-induced plasma using different energies and sample matrices with laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). In LIBS, a laser is focused onto the sample. The focused laser pulse heats, ablates, ionizes, and atomizes the sample, which results in the formation of plasma. The light from the plasma is spectrally resolved and detected. Elements in the plasma are identified by their unique spectral signatures. In this work, various elemental emission signals consisting of neutral and singly ionized lines were measured for each sample. Time decay curves were created for these elements in the sample at each energy. A double exponential fit was applied to the data to allow for an average lifetime calculation at each energy. Once all of the lifetimes were calculated, a comparative study was performed by comparing (1) species' lifetimes over the different energies tested, (2) the lifetimes of certain elements at the same energy with a different matrix, and (3) species’ lifetimes between the neutral and singly-ionized lines.

Lifetime analysis of species in the laser-induced plasma using different energies on a variety of samples

255th National Meeting (2018)

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