Evaluation of femtosecond LIBS for spectrochemical microanalysis of aluminium alloys.

The analytical performance of femtosecond laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) for elemental microanalysis of aluminium alloys and for mapping precipitate distribution on the sample surface has been studied in detail. A Ti-sapphire laser system producing pulses of 130 fs at 800 nm was used to generate the laser-induced plasma. Multi-element microanalysis of commercially available aluminium alloys was performed in air at atmospheric pressure.

Spectrochemical microanalysis of aluminum alloys by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy: identification of precipitates.

Multielemental microanalysis of commercially available aluminum alloys has been performed in air by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) by use of UV laser pulses with energies below 10 microJ. It is shown that the LIBS technique is capable of detecting the elemental composition of particles less than 10 microm in size, such as precipitates in an aluminum alloy matrix, by using single laser shots. Chemical mapping with a lateral resolution of approximately 10 microm of the distribution of precipitates in the surface plane of a sample was also carried out.