LIBS technique combined with blow gas and vacuum suction to remove particle cloud and enhance emission intensity during characterization of powder samples

The present study reports developing a bench-top Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) set up for the online analysis of powder samples without sample preparation. The powder particle blow-off during pulsed laser ablation was mitigated by adding a blow gas (an inert gas blown across the ablation surface) and a suction unit (for extraction of the blow gas and blown-off particle cloud) to the existing LIBS setup. The influence of a blow-gas combined with a suction unit on LIBS emission intensity from coal powder and flyash particles is studied in the present work. The effect of the blow gas flow rate and the suction pressure was studied on the LI-BS emission intensity and removal of the laser blown-off particle cloud. The combination gas flow at 2 lpm (liter per minute) flow rate and suction at 925 mbar (absolute) show an increase in the LIBS emission intensity and effective particle removal. The ratio of LIBS emission intensity of the powder sample and solid-target (pellet) sample improved from 0.25 without the Ar gas flow and the suction unit to 0.85, which is by a factor of 3.4 times with the proposed approach.