Development and creation of a remote-controlled underwater laser induced breakdown spectrometer for analysis of the chemical composition of sea water and bottom sediments

The developed underwater laser induced breakdown spectrometer consists of two units: 1- remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with the next main characteristics: work deep – up to 150 meters, maximum speed of immersion 1 m/s, maximum cruise velocity - 2 m/s and 2 – spectrometer unit (SU) consist of a DPSS Nd: YAG laser excitation source (double pulse with 50 mJ energy for each pulse at wavelength 1064 nm, pulse width 12 ns and pulse repetition rate 1-15 Hz, DF251, SOL Instruments), a spectrum recording system (Maya HR4000 or 2000 Pro spectrometer, Ocean Optics) and microcomputer. These two units are connected by Ethernet network and registered spectral data are automatically processed in a MATLAB platform.