Analysis of tungsten carbide coatings by infrared laser-induced argon spark with inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry

Infrared laser ablation was studied for application to the analysis of plasma-sprayed tungsten carbide/cobalt coatings. The potential of the laser induced argon-spark (LINA-Spark™), as a sample introduction device in inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry was studied. The use of an IR laser along with defocusing led to laser-induced microplasma-based ablation. The mass ablation rate, represented by the ICP emission intensity per laser beam unit area, exhibited a flat increase in the irradiance range 2–250 GW/cm2. A low slope (0.5) of this dependence in log–log scale gave evidence of plasma shielding. The steep increase in the measured acoustic signal when focused in front of the sample, i.e. in argon, indicated a breakdown of argon. Consequently, considerably lower ICP emissions were observed within the same range of irradiance. The cobalt/tungsten line intensity ratio in the ICP was practically constant from 1.5 up to at least 250 GW/cm2. Acceptable precision (R.S.D.<5%) was obtained without internal standardization for irradiance between 2 and 8 GW/cm2. Optimization of the laser pulse energy, repetition rate, beam focusing and sample displacement during interaction led to the linearization of dependences of signal vs. cobalt percentage, at least up to the highest studied value of 23% Co.