Pre-heating of an aluminum sample using a continuous laser diode in LIBS experiments

Abstract We present here the study of the pre-heating of an aluminum sample in laser-induced plasma spectroscopy (LIBS) experiments. The pre-heating of the sample was made using a continuous-wave (CW) laser diode having a wavelength of 450nm and 3.8 W power. The laser diode is focused on the aluminum sample by means of a plane-convex lens with a focal length of 10 cm. The ablation plasma is created by a pulsed Nd:YAG laser with 7ns of pulse duration. The results of using different energy values per pulse of the ablation laser on the pre-heated sample are reported. The pre-heating of the aluminum sample, using this laser diode, shows an increment of 30-50% in the ionic line intensity.