Shielding effect of laser-induced plasma in glass: pulse-to-pulse evolution of nitrogen and analyte emission lines

Abstract

A characteristic of the plasma shielding effect was investigated through simultaneous measurement of time evolution of nitrogen emission in ambient air and analyte-specific emission in a glass matrix with varying lens-to-sample distance (LTSD), laser pulse energy, and repetition rate. Even under the threshold energy of air breakdown, strong nitrogen-emission lines could be measured by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) for the glass samples in air at atmospheric pressure. The time evolution of the nitrogen emission was correlated reversely with a variation of various analyte emissions in the glass samples. Based on the reverse relation between the intensities of nitrogen and calcium emission intensities, the corrected values of the calcium emission line were calculated. This methodology shows consistent results independent of experimental conditions such as different LTSDs, laser energies, and repetition rates.