Diagnostics of Zinc-Selenium plasma produced by Nd:YAG laser

Abstract

We present the optical emission studies of the Zinc-Selenium (Zn-Se) plasma produced by the first (1064 nm) and second (532 nm) harmonics of a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. The target material was placed in front of laser beam in air at atmospheric pressure. The experimentally observed line profiles of neutral zinc (Zn I) at 249.34, 256.77, 271.24 and 277.09 nm respectively have been used to extract the electron temperature using the Boltzmann plot method. Whereas, the electron number density has been determined from the Stark broadening method using the neutral zinc (Zn I) line at 481.05 nm. The electron temperature is calculated by varying the distance from the target surface along the line of propagation of plasma plume and also by varying the laser irradiance. Beside we have studied the variation of number density as a function of laser irradiance as well as its variation with distance from the target surface. It is observed that electron temperature and electron number density increases as laser energy is increased.