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An airborne laser plasma is suggested as an ambient ion source for mass spectrometry. Its fundamental physical properties, such as an excellent spatial and temporal definition, high electron and ion densities and a high effective cross section in maintaining the plasma, make it a promising candidate for future applications. For deeper insights into the plasma properties, the optical plasma emission is examined and compared to mass spectra. The results show a seemingly contradictory behavior, since the emitted light reports the plasma to almost entirely consist of hot elemental ions, while the corresponding mass spectra exhibit the formation of intact molecular species. Further experiments, including time- resolved shadowgraphy, spatially resolved mass spectrometry, as well as flow-dependent emission spectroscopy and mass spectrometry, suggest the analyte molecules to be formed in the cold plasma vicinity upon interaction with reactive species formed inside the hot plasma center. Spatial separation is maintained by concentrically expanding pressure waves, inducing a strong unidirectional diffusion. The accompanying rarefaction inside the plasma center can be compensated by a gas stream application. This replenishing results in a strong increase in emission brightness, in local reactive species concentration, and eventually in direct mass spectrometric sensitivity. To determine the analytical performance of the new technique, a comparison with an atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) source was conducted. Two kitchen herbs, namely, spearmint and basil, were analyzed without any sample pretreatment. The presented results demonstrate a considerably higher sensitivity of the presented laser-spark ionization technique.
The improved Monte-Carlo (MC) method for standard-less analysis in laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is presented. Concentrations in MC LIBS are found by fitting model-generated synthetic spectra to experimental spectra. The current version of MC LIBS is based on the graphic processing unit (GPU) computation and reduces the analysis time down to several seconds per spectrum/sample. The previous version of MC LIBS which was based on the central processing unit (CPU) computation requested unacceptably long analysis times of 10's minutes per spectrum/sample. The reduction of the computational time is achieved through the massively parallel computing on the GPU which embeds thousands of co-processors. It is shown that the number of iterations on the GPU exceeds that on the CPU by a factor > 1000 for the 5-dimentional parameter space and yet requires > 10-fold shorter computational time. The improved GPU-MC LIBS outperforms the CPU-MS LIBS in terms of accuracy, precision, and analysis time. The performance is tested on LIBS-spectra obtained from pelletized powders of metal oxides consisting of CaO, Fe2O3, MgO, and TiO2 that simulated by-products of steel industry, steel slags. It is demonstrated that GPU-based MC LIBS is capable of rapid multi-element analysis with relative error between 1 and 10's percent that is sufficient for industrial applications (e.g. steel slag analysis). The results of the improved GPU-based MC LIBS are positively compared to that of the CPU-based MC LIBS as well as to the results of the standard calibration-free (CF) LIBS based on the Boltzmann plot method.
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.
The Radon transform tomography is used for reconstruction of the emissivity distribution in single- (SP) and double-pulse (DP) laser induced plasmas in orthogonal geometry. The orthogonal DP plasma is intrinsically asymmetric and thus suitable for the Radon reconstruction. The DP plasma consists of two plasmas separated by a short time interval of ~ 1 µs. The first plasma is created in air near the surface of a Si wafer and is followed (pre-ablation mode) or preceded (post-ablation mode) by the second plasma induced on this surface. A spectrometer moves in a semi-circular path around the plasma keeping the plasma in the rotation center. The optical detection is arranged so that a thin plasma layer parallel to the target surface is monitored. The axial symmetry of the SP plasma is investigated by comparing data from the Abel inversion taken at different angles and Radon reconstruction. The multi-angle measurements are used to estimate errors of the Abel reconstruction due to asymmetries of the plasma. Time-resolved Radon reconstruction in white light is performed for the DP plasma in both pre- and post-ablation modes. In the former case, the effect of ablated aerosol on the formation of the air plasma is monitored. In the latter case, a formation of an asymmetric compression shock created by the target plasma inside the air plasma is visualized. This observation is supported by computer simulations. An interaction of the two plasmas is studied by spectrally resolved Radon reconstruction revealing a complex distribution of target and ambient species inside the plasma at all studied delay times. Overall, it is demonstrated that Radon-based tomography is an informative tool to study transient asymmetric laser induced plasmas.
The paper describes past and present efforts in modeling of laser-induced plasma and overviews plasma diagnostics carried out by pump-probe techniques. Besides general information on existing plasma models, the emphasis is given to models relevant to spectrochemical analysis, i.e. models of radiating plasma. Special attention is paid to collisional-radiative (CR) and collisional-dominated (CD) plasma models where radiative processes play an important role. Also, calibration-free (CF) models are considered which may endow with the possibility for standardless spectroscopic analysis. In the diagnostic part, only methods based on the use of additional diagnostic tools (auxiliary lasers, optics, and probes) are described omitting those based on plasma own radiation. A short review is provided on image-based diagnostics (shadowgraphy, schlieren, and interferometry), absorption and fluorescence, Langmuir probe, and less frequently used cavity ringdown and Thomson scattering methods.
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.
Abel inversion applied to a transient laser induced plasma: implications from plasma modeling
(2011)
We test the effects of non-uniformity, non-transparency, and non-stationarity of a laser-induced plasma on the results obtained by the Abel inversion method. The method is commonly used for obtaining spatially resolved emissivity of axially symmetric non-homogeneous radiating objects. Besides the axial symmetry, the plasma is assumed to be optically thin. As the method addresses a certain plasma state, the plasma is required to be stationary during measurements. It is difficult to satisfy the aforementioned conditions for transient laser induced plasmas. As such the plasmas are not stationary; they have steep gradients of thermodynamic parameters that rapidly vary during the plasma evolution. Therefore, any conclusion based on time-integrated measurements and the corresponding data processing should account for these effects. In this work, we use the collision-dominated plasma model to generate time- and spatially resolved synthetic spectra. The spectra are processed by executing the Abel inversion using two numerical algorithms. Thus obtained spatially resolved plasma parameters (emissivity, temperature, and number density) are compared with the exact parameters used to set up the model. In doing so, the accuracy of the Abel inversion method is assessed. Special attention is paid to the dynamic aspect of the expanding plasma and possible errors which result from time-integrated measurements.
A spatial heterodyne spectrometer (SHS) is tested for the first time in combination with laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). The spectrometer is a modified version of the Michelson interferometer in which mirrors are replaced by diffraction gratings. The SHS contains no moving parts and the gratings are fixed at equal distances from the beam splitter. The main advantage is high throughput, about 200 times higher than that of dispersive spectrometers used in LIBS. This makes LIBS-SHS a promising technique for low-light standoff applications. The output signal of the SHS is an interferogram that is Fourier-transformed to retrieve the original plasma spectrum. In this proof-of-principle study, we investigate the potential of LIBS-SHS for material classification and quantitative analysis. Brass standards with broadly varying concentrations of Cu and Zn were tested. Classification via principal component analysis (PCA) shows distinct groupings of materials according to their origin. The quantification via partial least squares regression (PLS) shows good precision (relative standard deviation , 10%) and accuracy (within 6 5% of nominal concentrations). It is possible that LIBS-SHS can be developed into a portable, inexpensive, rugged instrument for field applications.
The authenticity of objects and artifacts is often
the focus of forensic analytic chemistry. In document fraud
cases, the most important objective is to determine the
origin of a particular ink. Here, we introduce a new
approach which utilizes the combination of two analytical
methods, namely Raman spectroscopy and laser-induced
breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). The methods provide
complementary information on both molecular and elemental
composition of samples. The potential of this hyphenation
of spectroscopic methods is demonstrated for ten blue
and black ink samples on white paper. LIBS and Raman
spectra from different inks were fused into a single data
matrix, and the number of different groups of inks was
determined through multivariate analysis, i.e., principal
component analysis, soft independent modelling of class
analogy, partial least-squares discriminant analysis, and
support vector machine. In all cases, the results obtained
with the combined LIBS and Raman spectra were found to
be superior to those obtained with the individual Raman or
LIBS data sets.