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Abstract
The emission line intensities enhancement in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is a subject of significant interest for the last several years and different techniques have been opted to achieve this objective. In this contribution, we present a systematic study on the signal enhancement in the laser-produced Cu-Zn alloy plasma using two experimental settings: by increasing the laser energy from 22 mJ to 137 mJ and keeping the target at room temperature and secondly by keeping the laser energy fixed at 22 mJ and heating the target from 298 K to 673 K. The line intensities of Cu I and Zn I showed an increasing trend in both the approaches. The plasma temperatures remain nearly constant whereas the electron number densities show an increasing trend by increasing the sample temperature at fixed laser energy and by increasing the laser energy at a constant temperature. A matching signal enhancement has been observed at a constant surface temperature of 298 K and 50 mJ laser energy and a constant laser energy 22 mJ and 600 K. The scanning electron microscopy images showed elliptical crater formation by heating the target at a fixed laser energy of 22 mJ with almost the same horizontal and vertical diameters of 825 ± 25 μm and 1000 ± 25 μm, respectively. An improvement in the signal to noise ratio has been observed by increasing the sample temperature. The results affirmed that the increase in temperature at the sample surface induces emission line intensity enhancement.