Abstract
Copper concentrations in drinking-water is very important to be monitored which can cause cancer if it exceed about 10 mg/liter. In the present work, we have developed a simple, low laser power method to improve the detection limits of laser induced plasma spectroscopy LIBS for copper in aqueous solutions with different concentrations. In this method a medium-density fiberboard (MDF) wood have been used as a substrate that absorbs the liquid sample to transform laser liquid interaction to laser solid interaction. Using the fundamental wavelength of Nd:YAG laser, the constructed plasma emissions were monitored for elemental analysis. The signal-to-noise ratio SNR was optimized using low laser fluence of 32 J cm(-2), and detector (CDD camera) gate delay of 0.5 mu s. Both the electron temperature and density of the induced plasma were determined using Boltzmann plot and the FWHM of the Cu at 324.7 nm, respectively. The plasma temperature was found to be 1.197 eV, while the plasma density was about 1.66 x 10(19) cm(-3). The detection limits for Cu at 324.7 nm is found to be 131 ppb comparable to the results by others using complicated system.