Evaluation of the temporal profiles and the analytical features of a laser ablation — Pulsed glow discharge coupling for optical emission spectrometry

• Ablation is carried out during PGD temporal regions (prepeak, plateau, afterglow).
• Different emission enhancements were found in each temporal PGD region.
• LA-PGD improvements depend on the characteristics of the studied emission line.
• Better linear correlations and lower matrix effects have been found in LA-PGD.

The coupling of a glow discharge (GD) in pulsed mode (PGD) as secondary source for excitation/ionization of the material provided by laser ablation (LA) has been investigated using optical emission spectrometry (OES). The variation of the laser pulse delay with respect to the GD pulse allows to producing the ablation process during prepeak, plateau or afterglow GD regions. Emission properties of the LA-PGD plasma in each temporal region of the GD pulse have been evaluated for analytical lines of different elements. Resonant atomic lines have shown higher emission intensity in the prepeak region compared to non-resonant lines. Non-resonant lines showed higher enhancement of the emission intensity in the afterglow region. Moreover, the coupled LA-PGD system offered better linear correlation coefficients using a set of glass standards for calibration as well as lower detection limits (by at least a factor of two) when compared to laser induced breakdown spectroscopy.