Energy dependence of Cl emission lines in CO2 laser induced breakdown spectroscopy

Abstract

Chlorine (Cl) detection using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) techniques in geology and environment samples is still challenging since the experimental conditions greatly influence the analytical performance of LIBS. Cl emission in LIBS must be studied carefully to find the optimum condition to allow Cl detection. In the present study, Cl emission was studied from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) sample containing Cl as major element. A Transversely Excited Atmosphere (TEA) carbon dioxide (CO2) laser was used for inducing plasma from the sample. Cl emission was investigated by varying the experimental conditions, especially energy of the laser pulse. The emission spectrum from the consequent plasma was detected using an Optical Multichannel Analyzer (OMA) system. It was found that Cl emission lines only can be obtained when helium was used as the surrounding gas. The strongest emission line of Cl I 837.59 nm in the infrared region cannot be detected even under helium surrounding gas. Instead, many ionic emission lines of Cl in ultraviolet regions including the strong ionic lines (Cl II 479.45 nm, Cl II 481.00 nm, Cl II 481.94 nm and the weak lines (Cl II 476. 86 nm, Cl II 478.13 nm, Cl II 489.67 nm, Cl II 490.47 nm and Cl II 491.77 nm) can unequivocally be detected. It was also found that the intensity of Cl emission lines critically depends on the energy of the laser pulse, namely the emission intensity of Cl lines increases sharply with energy. In present work, the highest intensity of Cl emission lines was obtained when the energy of the laser pulse was about 2500 mJ, giving strong and clear Cl emission lines with low background and relatively high signal to background ratio of more than 3.