An experimental observation of the different behavior of ionic and neutral lines of iron as a function of number density in a binary carbon–iron mixture

We report on the dependence of the intensities of atomic and ionic lines emitted by a nanosecond laser-induced plasma on the atomic number densities of the constituents of a binary mixture formed of carbon and iron. We show that the packing density of the sample greatly affects the relative standard deviation of the emission lines. Furthermore, we show that the variation of the intensities of the C and Fe emission lines depends in a non-trivial way on the relative C–Fe concentration. The intensities of Fe neutral atomic lines behave differently than those of the ionic ones particularly at and above concentrations of 75%–80% Fe embedded in a carbon matrix. Unlike the emission from neutral Fe, those from ionic Fe yield a very sharp decrease followed by an equally strong increase of the emission lines over a relatively small range of relative concentration of C and Fe. To better investigate this effect, we have compared the results obtained with nanosecond-LIBS to those with femtosecond-LIBS and found that this phenomenon disappears. The physical interpretation of the sharp decrease followed by an equally sharp increase in the emission intensities from Fe ions as the concentration of Fe is increased requires more studies.