Detection of micro-toxic heavy metals in commercial ink powder brands via short-long orthogonal dual pulse LIPs and ICP-OES spectroscopic techniques for environmental protection

Abstract

ABSTRACT We successfully offer a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the micro-toxic elements that are found in various brands of commercial ink powders (CIPs) available in Saudi Arabia employing short-long orthogonal double-pulse laser-induced plasma spectroscopy (SLODP-LIPS), and an inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES). The compositional analysis exploiting the fast detection SLODP-LIPS geometry is based on the received emission spectra of the laser-generated ink plasma flare to promote the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) compared to the single-pulse (SP) LIPS geometry. The investigated elemental composition of CIPs brands was compared with ICP-OES. The emission optical spectra of the CIPs contain spectral lines of aluminium, antimony, cadmium, calcium, carbon, chromium, copper, lead, iron, potassium, silicon, sodium, and zinc, with varying intensities. To overwhelm the struggle of inadequate SP-LIPS sensitivity or calibration-free LIPS (CF-LIPS) routine characterisation of the tested material and to accomplish a greater emitting volume, grander atomised mass, the lower detection limit, and higher plasma temperature, a double-pulse alternate for sample vaporisation were exercised in our work. The density and electron temperature of the spectral lines of the pertinent elements were deduced by stark-broadening and Boltzmann plot, with an average of about 1.23 × 1018 cm−3 and 9300 ± 200 K, respectively. It was found that both outcomes from SLODP-LIPS and ICP-OES were in greater agreement. The analysis of different commercial ink brands shows that SLODP-LIPS is a potent scheme for the analysis of the micro-toxic trace element in any solids.