Optimization of Liquid Jet System for Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy Analysis
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) enables direct in-situ analysis of samples in any state of matter. This capability of LIBS enables its utilization in vast variety of applications, for instance bioapplications and online monitoring. We report on the optimization of a system for direct elemental analysis of samples in liquid phase using LIBS technique. This system consists of a peristaltic pump and a thin specially designed nozzle producing a thin flow of liquid solution/suspension. Such arrangement was used to reduce splashes of liquid and sedimentation of suspension and thus to improve the repeatability of an experiment. Firstly, stepping frequency of the peristaltic pump was synchronized with a flash lamp of ablation laser source. Using such synchronization, changes in pressure and hence volume of liquid along the step of the peristaltic pump were mitigated. Changes in the liquid flow volume affect the laser ablation process in the sense of so-called effective volume function. Other phenomenon affecting LIBS signal fluctuations, moving breakdown, was also studied. Afterwards, single pulse (SP; 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser pulse) and double pulse (DP; 1064 nm and 532 nm Nd:YAG laser pulses) LIBS systems were optimized to obtain best possible signal-to-noise ratio. The performance of SP and DPLIBS in a detection of traces of heavy metals was estimated. As a result, significant improvement in sensitivity (limits of detection) of DP LIBS system for analysis of Cu and Pb was observed. |
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