High spatial resolution in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy of expanding plasmas

We report a technique that is able to achieve high spatial resolution in the measurement of the temporal and spectral emission characteristics of laser-induced expanding plasmas. The plasma is imaged directly onto the slit of an imaging spectrograph coupled to a time-gated intensified camera, with the plasma expansion direction being parallel to the slit extension. In this way, a single hybrid detection system is used to acquire the spatial, spectral and temporal characteristics of the laser induced plasma. The parallel acquisition approach of this technique ensures a much better spatial resolution in the expansion direction, reproducibility and data acquisition speed than commonly obtained by sequential measurements at different distances from the target. We have applied this technique to study the laser-induced plasma in LiNbO3 and Bi12Ge1O20, revealing phenomena not seen in such detail with standard instruments. These include extreme line broadening up to a few nanometers accompanied by self-absorption near the target surface, as well as different ablation and expansion dynamics for the different species ejected. Overall, the high precision and wealth of quantitative information accessible with this technique open up new possibilities for the study of fundamental plasma expansion processes during pulsed laser ablation.