Laser produced plasma from zinc oxide nanomaterial

Utilizing the laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), we report, a strong enhanced emission from laser produced plasma in air from Zinc nanomaterial in comparison with the corresponding bulk samples. The enhancement favored certain Nd:YAG laser harmonics wavelengths. Quite interestingly, laser radiation harmonics realize a two orders of magnitude boost in the enhancement factor for certain spectral lines. Although analysis showed that such enhancement was found to increase exponentially with the plasma evolution time, however, it declines as the laser fluence increased. Experimental data analysis clearly showed that the observed enhancement is mainly associated with a compatible change in the plasma electron density. We claim that this strong enhanced optical emission from laser produced plasma is linked with concomitant surface plasmon resonant excitation preferably on nano oxide materials. Such experimental findings could improve the LIBS-sensitivity down to extremely low concentrations, and most importantly it can utilize the impact of laser-plasma generation from nano-structured materials as a new media to materialize high peak power lasers on the nano-scales.