Concentration of Li atoms in plasmas produced from laser ablation of LiNbO3

An analytic kinetic model capable to predict the spatial and temporal evolution of the population densities of ground and excited state Li atoms (up to the 32D level) in nonequilibrium laser-generated plasmas from LiNbO3 targets is presented. The model is especially useful as a nonequilibrium diagnostic tool for determining the concentrations of Li atoms from available measurements of electron density (Ne) and temperature (Te). In addition, the present approach is able to determine the electron kinetic mechanisms contributing to populate and depopulate the Li atom ground and excited states in laser-produced plasmas. A very reasonable qualitative agreement is found when comparing the model predicted Li atom densities with those obtained experimentally. Thus, the proposed approach can be used as a useful tool to optimize the processes involved in pulsed laser deposition of LiNbO3 thin films.