LIBS ANALYSIS OF CHROMATE CONVERTION COATING IN GALVANIZED STEEL PLATES

F. C. ALVIRA; G.M. BILMES,; J.D. CULCASI; C. LLORENTE; P. D. BILMES; R. D. BONETTO

Tenerife, España

Conferencia; 9th International Conference on Laser Ablation; 2007

CSIC, ESPAÑA

Surface layered materials are present in many industrial products. Those layers can be a consequence of fabrication processes or are applied to modify the substrate properties or to improve its aesthetic aspects. Examples of layered samples are antireflex coatings of optical materials, alloy layers that cover car bearings to avoid friction and galvanized layers applied over steel plates to avoid the oxidation of the substrate. In the last case the use of chromium was widely used during many years. Nowadays environmental regulations in many countries require free chromium galvanized plates. Quality control of products and production processes in many industries require real time analytical techniques for fast, on-line, qualitative or semiquatitative determination of the main composition of the production. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) demonstrated to be as a good option for these applications. In this work we show the capabilities of LIBS for the determination of the presence of Chromium in galvanized steel plates in comparison with standard laboratory techniques, as X-Ray photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDAX).We show how LIBS can identify Cr present in nanometric layers of these type of samples in a faster, on line and real time way.