In this study, a method is presented to measure precisely the thickness of coated components based on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). The thickness is determined by repetitively ablating the coating with ultrashort laser pulses, monitoring the spectrum of the generated plasma and calculating the coating thickness from the specific plasma signal in comparison to a reference measurement. We compare different pulse durations of the laser (290 fs, 10 ps, 6 ns) to extend the material analysis capabilities of LIBS to a real thickness measurement tool. The method is designed for production processes with known coating materials. Here, we show this for a nickel coating and a tungsten carbide coating on a copper sample with thicknesses from 5-30 µm.
Keywords: coating thickness; industrial application; laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS); pulse duration comparison; ultrashort laser pulses.