Calibration-free laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy for quantitative elemental analysis of materials

The application of calibration-free laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (CF-LIBS) for quantitative analysis of materials, illustrated by CF-LIBS applied to a brass sample of known composition, is presented in this paper. The LIBS plasma is produced by a 355?nm pulsed Nd:YAG laser with a pulse duration of 6?ns focussed onto a brass sample in air at atmospheric pressure. The time-resolved atomic and ionic emission lines of Cu and Zn from the LIBS spectra recorded by an Echelle spectrograph coupled with a gated intensified charge coupled detector are used for the plasma characterization and the quantitative analysis of the sample. The time delay where the plasma is optically thin and is also in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE), necessary for the elemental analysis of samples from the LIBS spectra, is deduced. An algorithm relating the experimentally measured spectral intensity values with the basic physics of the plasma is developed. Using the algorithm, the Zn and Cu concentrations in the brass sample are determined. The analytical results obtained from the CF-LIBS technique agree well with the certified values of the elements in the sample, with an accuracy error <1%.     

Single-mode fibre coupler as refractometer sensor

We report a simple, non-intrusive fibre-optic refractometer sensor for measuring the refractive index of liquid and optically transparent solid medium. Sensing principle of the proposed sensor is based on monitoring the back-reflected light signal through the second input port of a 2 × 1 single-mode fibre coupler when light signal from the output port is focussed at the interface of air and a liquid or solid medium and back-reflected exactly along the same path. Depending on the refractive index of the medium, the amount of back-reflected intensity would vary and in the present work we exploit this principle to measure the refractive index of an optically transparent medium. Variation of refractive index as small as 0.001 RIU can be measured with our proposed sensor.