Comparison of sample temperature effect on femtosecond and nanosecond laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Abstract In this paper, we investigated the emission spectra of plasmas produced from femtosecond and nanosecond laser ablations at different target temperatures in air. A brass was selected as ablated target of the experiment. The results indicated that spectral emission intensity and plasma temperature showed similar trend for femtosecond and nanosecond lasers, and the two parameters were improved by increasing the sample temperature in both cases. Moreover, the temperature of nanosecond laser-excited plasma was higher compared with that of femtosecond laser-excited plasma, and the increase of the plasma temperature in the case of nanosecond laser was more evident. In addition, there was a significant difference in electron density between femtosecond and nanosecond laser-induced plasmas. The electron density for femtosecond laser decreased with increasing the target temperature, while for nanosecond laser, the electron density was almost unchanged at different sample temperatures.