A comparative study of single and double pulse of laser induced breakdown spectroscopy of silver

Abstract

We present a comparative study of the collinear and orthogonal pre-ablation dual pulse configurations of laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) of silver using Nd:YAG lasers. The effect of the inter-pulse delay and the ratio of the laser pulse energies on the signal intensity enhancement for both the dual pulse configurations have been investigated. Using the first laser at 532 nm and second laser at 1064 nm delayed by 5 μs, we achieved nearly 2 times signal enhancement in the collinear double-pulsed configuration and nearly 12 times in the pre-ablation orthogonal configuration as compared to SP LIBS. It is ascertained that at the optimized value of the inter-pulse delay between the two lasers, the intensity ratio of the neutral silver lines follows the local thermo dynamical equilibrium (LTE) condition and it is also in excellent agreement with that of the relative transitions probabilities ratio listed in the NIST data base.