Author(s)

Shawqi A. M. Mansour

Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Accreditation and Quality Authority, Gaza, Palestine.

In the present work, we have studied the temporal evolution of aluminum alloy plasma produced by the fundamental (1064 nm) of a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser by placing the target material in air at atmospheric pressure. The four Al I-neutral lines at 308.21, 309.27, 394.40 and 369.15 nm as well as Al II-ionic lines at 281.61, 385.64 and 466.30 nm are used for the determination of the electron temperature T_e using Saha-Boltzmann plot method. The neutral aluminum lines were found to suffer from optical thickness which manifested itself on the form of scattered points around the Saha-Boltzmann line. The isolated optically thin hydrogen H_α-line at 656.27 nm appeared in the spectra under the same experimental conditions was used to correct the Al I-lines which contained some optical thickness. The measurements were repeated at different delay times ranging from 1 to 5 μs. The comparison between the deduced electron temperatures from aluminum neutral lines before correction against the effect self-absorption to that after correction revealed a precise value in temperature. The results sure that, in case of the presence of self-absorption effect the temperature varies from (1.4067 - 1.2548 eV) as the delay time is varied from 0 to 5 μs. Whereas, in the case of repairing against the effect, it varies from (1.2826 - 0.8961 eV) for the same delay time variation.

Laser Induces Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Self-Absorption (SA), Saha-Boltzmann Plot, Delay Time (T_d), Electron Number Density (N_e), Plasma Temperature (T_e)

Mansour, S. (2015) Self-Absorption Effects on Electron Temperature-Measurements Utilizing Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS)-Techniques. Optics and Photonics Journal, 5, 79-90. doi: 10.4236/opj.2015.53007.