Emission Characteristics of Carbon Using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

Carbon is one of organic elements, which important for human life and can be used to detenmine the characteristics of materials. Some techniques usually used to identify carbon element is spark spectroscopy and combustion spectroscopy. But in this method, the sample should have a special treatment such as hit by the electric spark, and requires a long time for the preparation. In this work, identification of carbon element has been made by using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy utilizing a high-power pulse Nd:YAG laser. The material used as a sample was graphite plate, which contains high concentration of carbon. Experimentally, a pulse Nd:YAG laser was directed and focused on the graphite plate sample to induce a luminous plasma containing excited atoms, electrons, and ions from the graphite plate. The analytical emission spectrum obtained from the graphite plate using the present technique. It can clearly be seen that many atomic and ionic emission lines are observed with relatively high intensities and low background emission. Based on experiment, it was found that the optimum sensitivity was obtained with increasing pulse laser repetition rate and laser energy.