Influence of surrounding gas, composition and pressure on plasma plume dynamics of nanosecond pulsed laser-induced aluminum plasmas

In this article, we present a comprehensive study of the plume dynamics of plasmas generated by laser ablation of an aluminum target. The effect of both ambient gas composition (helium, nitrogen or argon) and pressure (from ∼5 × 10−7 Torr up to atmosphere) is studied. The time- and space- resolved observation of the plasma plume are performed from spectrally integrated images using an intensified Charge Coupled Device (iCCD) camera. The iCCD images show that the ambient gas does not significantly influence the plume as long as the gas pressure is lower than 20 Torr and the time delay below 300 ns. However, for pressures higher than 20 Torr, the effect of the ambient gas becomes important, the shortest plasma plume length being observed when the gas mass species is highest. On the other hand, space- and time- resolved emission spectroscopy of aluminum ions at λ = 281.6 nm are used to determine the Time-Of-Flight (TOF) profiles. The effect of the ambient gas on the TOF profiles and therefore on the propagation velocity of Al ions is discussed. A correlation between the plasma plume expansion velocity deduced from the iCCD images and that estimated from the TOF profiles is presented. The observed differences are attributed mainly to the different physical mechanisms governing the two diagnostic techniques.