LIBS ANALYSIS ON NEODYMIUM DOPED LITHIUM NIOBATE LASER CRYSTALS

F. C. ALVIRA; A. RODENAS; D. JAQUE; G. A. TORCHIA

Tenerife España

Congreso; 9th International Conference on Laser Ablation; 2007

CSIC España

Nowadays the fabrication of 2D and 3D microstructures by direct laser writing is an active field of research which demands a strong knowledge on laser-matter interaction in order to produce efficient and compact devices for photonic applications such as: active waveguides, couplers, multiplexer, waveguides arrays, modulators, ring resonators etc [1]. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) is an analytical technique whose main characteristics are: no need for sample preparation, reduced analysis time, portability and useful for online analysis. No much work has been done using LIBS as analytical technique to characterize of laser crystals [2], even though there still exist many unanswered questions regarding the fundamental mechanisms underlying the nanosecond laser interaction with crystals. In spite of this, efficient micro-photonic devices have been obtained during last years by tailoring optical materials with ns laser pulses. Therefore in order to control and optimize the micro-modificated regions made with ns pulses, laser matter interaction dynamics need to be further explored. In this way, LIBS could be a simple and efficient tool to reach these goals. Measurements performed in this paper have the typical LIBS experimental arrangement: a nanosecond Nd:YAG laser as excitation source while the detection system is a fiber coupled Echelle spectrometer with a non intensified CCD camera. In this work we have characterized the laser crystals by LIBS, we particularly studied the Nd3+ doped MgO:LiNbO3 crystals. Using spectroscopic data we have determined plasma temperature and electron density as a function of the incident wavelength and we also show characteristic spectra of each analyzed sample.