Abstract
Through laser ablation processes, significant amounts of particles can be generated from a surface of cement, stainless steel, or alumina. The minimal laser fluence (mJ cm-2), or threshold energy, required to produce a detectable amount of particles (100 particles cm-3) was investigated experimentally. The threshold energy was wavelength-dependent and was found to be the greatest for a pure material, alumina, then for a complex mixture, cement, and least for a simple mixture, stainless steel. The threshold energy requirement for three tested materials was found to be significantly higher for the IR (1064-nm) laser; it was 2.4-10.1 times higher than for the UV (266-nm) laser and 9.1-15.2 times higher than for the Vis (532-nm) laser. Interestingly, the UV laser has a higher threshold energy (1.5-4.0 times higher) than the Vis does. A log-log linear model was found to correlate particle production with the laser fluence of all three wavelengths. Of the three materials tested, stainless steel produced the most particles at a given fluence while alumina produced the fewest. Hypotheses of the particle generation mechanisms based upon the observations are also given here.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1513-1526 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Journal of Aerosol Science |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 12 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2004 |
Funding
This work was performed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for a project funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research Program, Environmental Science Management Program (EMSP Project # 82,807). ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the US Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. D.-W. Lee was supported in part by an appointment to the ORNL Postdoctoral Research Associates Program administered jointly by ORNL and the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Baohua Gu of the Environmental Sciences Division at ORNL is acknowledged for providing and preparing the samples used in this study. We express our appreciation to the anonymous reviewers for their thorough and constructive comments.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | DE-AC05-00OR22725, 82,807 |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | |
| Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education |
Keywords
- Alumina
- Cement
- Laser ablation
- Low fluence
- Nanoparticle
- Stainless steel