Laser ablation of organic materials for discrimination of bacteria in an inorganic background

Matthieu Baudelet, Myriam Boueri, Jin Yu, Xianglei Mao, Samuel S. Mao, Richard Russo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

We demonstrate in this paper that laser ablation allows efficient analysis of organic and biological materials. Such analysis is based on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) which consists in the detection of the optical emission from the plasma induced by a high intensity laser pulse focused on the sample surface. The optimization of the ablation regime in terms of laser parameters (pulse duration, wavelength, fluence) is important to generate a plasma suitable for the analysis. We first present the results of a study of laser ablation of organic samples with different laser parameters using time-resolved shadowgraph. We correlate the early stage expansion of the plasma to its optical emission properties, which allows us to choose suitable laser parameters for an efficient analysis of organic or biological samples by LIBS. As an illustration of the analytical ability of LIBS for biological materials, we show that the emission from CN molecules can be used to distinguish between biological and inorganic samples. Native CN molecular fragment directly ablated from a biological sample are identified using time-resolved LIBS. Those due to recombination with nitrogen contained in atmospheric air can be distinguished with their specific time evolution behavior.

Original languageBritish English
Title of host publicationUltrafast Phenomena in Semiconductors and Nanostructure Materials XIII
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
EventUltrafast Phenomena in Semiconductors and Nanostructure Materials XIII - San Jose, CA, United States
Duration: 25 Jan 200929 Jan 2009

Publication series

NameProceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Volume7214
ISSN (Print)0277-786X

Conference

ConferenceUltrafast Phenomena in Semiconductors and Nanostructure Materials XIII
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Jose, CA
Period25/01/0929/01/09

Keywords

  • Bacteria
  • Biological material detection
  • Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy
  • Laser-induced plasma
  • Organic materials

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