Quantitative analysis of C, Si, Mn, Ni, Cr and Cu in low-alloy steel under ambient conditions via laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

A diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL) with a high energetic stability and long service life is applied to ablate the steel samples instead of traditional Nd:YAG laser pumped by a xenon lamp, and several factors, such as laser pulse energy, repetition rate and argon flow rate, that influence laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) analytical performance are investigated in detail. Under the optimal experiment conditions, the relative standard deviations for C, Si, Mn, Ni, Cr and Cu are 3.3%–8.9%, 0.9%–2.8%, 1.2%–4.1%, 1.7%–3.0%, 1.1%–3.4% and 2.5%–8.5%, respectively, with the corresponding relative errors of 1.1%–7.9%, 1.0%–6.3%, 0.4%–3.9%, 1.5%–6.3%, 1.2%–4.0% and 1.2%–6.4%. Compared with the results of the traditional spark discharge optical emission spectrometry technique, the analytical performance of LIBS is just a little inferior due to the less stable laser-induced plasma and smaller amount of ablated sample by the laser. However, the precision, detection limits and accuracy of LIBS obtained in our present work were sufficient to meet the requirements for process analysis. These technical performances of higher stability of output energy and longer service life for DPSSL, in comparison to the Q-switch laser pumped by xeon lamp, qualify it well for the real time online analysis for different industrial applications.