Abstract

Laser spectroscopic techniques have significantly enhanced the performance of atomic spectrometry [1,2]. Despite the impressive detection power of laser methods, they are as a rule still far from being practically applied in routine analyses especially of complex natural samples of environmental interest. The main reason for this situation hitherto remains the comparatively higher complexity and cost of tunable lasers and their power supplies excluding low-power semiconductor laser diodes, that have excelent potential spectroscopic and operational properties for spectral analysis [3]. Of course, these laser sources of radiation at present also have some specific disadvantages, that restrains their wide practical application. On the other hand, the common tunable dye laser-based instruments can compete with established analytical techniques and have a chance to be routinely used for the direct elemental analysis espesially at trace levels or for solving some narrowly specific problems.

© 1998 Optical Society of America