Elemental Identification of Materials Using Optical Emission Spectra during Electric Discharge Machining

Abstract

Elemental identification of material is a prime most important in material science field. Electric discharge is used for material elemental identification with optical emission spectroscopy. During electric discharge machining between two electrodes plasma is generated which emits intense radiation in the UV-Visible region. The generated plasma captured by optical emission spectroscopic technique and elements are identified from recorded spectra by matching with standard NIST database. This method is simple, rapid, and inexpensive compared to all other elemental identification method. The elements of the metal, semiconductors, even insulators can be identified without much difficulty. The elemental identification of material has been investigated in macro and micro level.