TY - JOUR A1 - Shelby, D. A1 - Merk, Sven A1 - Smith, B.W. A1 - Gornushkin, Igor B. A1 - Panne, Ulrich A1 - Omenetto, N. T1 - Temperature evaluation by simultaneous emission and saturated fluorescence measurements: A critical theoretical and experimental appraisal of the approach N2 - Temperature is one of the most important physical parameters of plasmas induced by a focused laser beam on solid targets, and its experimental evaluation has received considerable attention. An intriguing approach, first proposed by Kunze (H.-J. Kunze, Experimental check of local thermodynamic equilibrium in discharges, Appl. Opt., 25 (1986) 13–13.) as a check of the existence of local thermodynamic equilibrium, is based upon the simultaneous measurement of the thermal emission and the optically saturated fluorescence of the same selected atomic transition. The approach, whose appealing feature is that neither the calibration of the set-up nor the spontaneous radiative probability of the transitions is needed, has not yet been applied, to our knowledge, to analytical flames and plasmas. A critical discussion of the basic requirements for the application of the method, its advantages, and its experimental limitations, is therefore presented here. For our study, Ba+ transitions in a plasma formed by focusing a pulsed Nd:YAG laser (1064 nm) on a glass sample containing BaO are selected. At various delay times from the plasma initiation, a pulsed, excimer-pumped dye laser tuned at the center of two Ba transitions (6s ²S1/2 → 6p ²P°3/2; 455.403 nm and 6p ²P°1/2 → 6d ²S1/2; 452.493 nm) is used to enhance the populations of the excited levels (6p ²P°3/2 and 6d ²S1/2) above their thermal values. The measured ratio of the emission and direct line fluorescence signals observed at 614.171 nm (6p ²P°3/2 → 5d ²D5/2) and 489.997 nm (6d ²S1/2 → 6p ²P°3/2) is then related to the excitation temperature of the plasma. Our conclusion is that the approach, despite being indeed attractive and clever, does not seem to be easily applicable to flames and plasmas, in particular to transient and inhomogeneous plasmas such as those induced by lasers on solids. KW - Plasma temperature KW - Optically saturated fluorescence KW - Laser induced plasma KW - Barium ion emission KW - Emission/fluorescence ratio PY - 2013 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sab.2013.09.002 SN - 0584-8547 SN - 0038-6987 VL - 89 SP - 50 EP - 59 PB - Elsevier B.V. CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-30436 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gornushkin, Igor B. A1 - Panne, Ulrich A1 - Winefordner, J. D. T1 - Linear correlation for identification of materials by laser induced breakdown spectroscopy: Improvement via spectral filtering and masking N2 - The purpose of this work is to improve the performance of a linear correlation method used for material identification in laser induced breakdown spectroscopy. The improved correlation procedure is proposed based on the selection and use of only essential spectral information and ignoring empty spectral fragments. The method is tested on glass samples of forensic interest. The 100% identification capability of the new method is demonstrated in contrast to the traditional approach where the identification rate falls below 100% for many samples. KW - Correlation analysis KW - Linear correlation KW - Material identification KW - Laser induced plasma KW - LIBS PY - 2009 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sab.2009.07.038 SN - 0584-8547 SN - 0038-6987 VL - 64 IS - 10 SP - 1040 EP - 1047 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-20621 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Eschlböck-Fuchs, S. A1 - Demidov, Alexander A1 - Gornushkin, Igor B. A1 - Schmid, Thomas A1 - Rössler, R. A1 - Huber, N. A1 - Panne, Ulrich A1 - Pedarnig, J. D. T1 - Tomography of homogenized laser-induced plasma by Radon transform technique N2 - Tomography of a laser-induced plasma in air is performed by inverse Radon transform of angle-resolved plasma images. Plasmas were induced by single laser pulses (SP), double pulses (DP) in collinear geometry, and by a combination of single laser pulses with pulsed arc discharges (SP-AD). Images of plasmas on metallurgical steel slags were taken at delay times suitable for calibration-free laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (CFLIBS). Delays ranged from few microseconds for SP and DP up to tens of microseconds for SP-AD excitation. The white-light and the spectrally resolved emissivity ε(x,y,z) was reconstructed for the three plasma excitation schemes. The electron number density Ne(x,y,z) and plasma temperature Te(x,y,z) were determined from Mg and Mn emission lines in reconstructed spectra employing the Saha-Boltzmann plot method. The SP plasma revealed strongly inhomogeneous emissivity and plasma temperature. Re-excitation of plasma by a second laser pulse (DP) and by an arc discharge (SP-AD) homogenized the plasma and reduced the spatial variation of ε and Te. The homogenization of a plasma is a promising approach to increase the accuracy of calibration-free LIBS analysis of complex materials. KW - Plasma tomography KW - Laser induced plasma KW - Radon transform technique KW - Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) KW - Steel slag KW - Calibration-free analysis PY - 2016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sab.2016.07.007 VL - 123 SP - 59 EP - 67 PB - Elsevier B.V. AN - OPUS4-37452 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -