Ultraviolet laser microplasma-gas chromatography detector: detection of species-specific fragment emission

Characteristic laser-produced microplasma emissions from various simple carbon-containing vapors entrained in a He carrier gas have been observed and compared. A focused ArF (193-nm) excimer laser is used to induce microplasmas with modest pulse energies (15 mJ or less) in the effluent region of a g...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied optics (2004) 1990-11, Vol.29 (33), p.4987-4992
Main Authors: Locke, R J, Morris, J B, Forch, B E, Miziolek, A W
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Characteristic laser-produced microplasma emissions from various simple carbon-containing vapors entrained in a He carrier gas have been observed and compared. A focused ArF (193-nm) excimer laser is used to induce microplasmas with modest pulse energies (15 mJ or less) in the effluent region of a gas chromatography capillary column. Strong atomic (C, H, O, Cl, and F) as well as molecular (C(2), CH, and CCI) emissions are observed with very high SNRs. A plasma emission survey indicates that different classes of molecule show unique spectra which make it relatively easy to distinguish one chemical class from another. These results suggest that a laser microplasma gas chromatography detector (LM-GCD) should offer additional discrimination/resolution for unknown sample gas mixture analysis. In addition, the LM-GCD exhibits a significant advantage over certain other GC detectors, like the widely used flame ionization detector, by readily detecting nonresponsive gases such as CO, CO(2), CCl(4) and Freons.
ISSN:1559-128X
DOI:10.1364/AO.29.004987