Trace-concentration detection of cobalt in a liquid flow cell by degenerate four-wave mixing using low-power off-resonant laser excitation.

Optical phase conjugation by degenerate four-wave mixing (D4WM) in an absorbing metal-ion solution using a low-power argon-ion laser as the excitation source is demonstrated. This nonlinear laser technique can be used as a sensitive analytical spectroscopic method for trace-concentration measurement of metal ions in a small-volume continuously flowing analyte cell. Several important characteristics are discussed, including the effects of solvent properties, excitation wave-length, laser intensity, and analyte absorptivity on signal intensity. Detection of 0.26 ng (4.4 pmol) of cobalt inside the laser probe volume of 0.14 microL is reported using an excitation wavelength that is 136 nm away from the maximum absorption wavelength of the analyte solution. The minimum absorbance measured in our D4WM experiment is 2.0 X 10(-5) without complex formation for cobalt. The D4WM detection sensitivity, in terms of the concentration-absorptivity product, is 4.05 X 10(-4) cm-1 for cobalt(II) in ethanol. Our preliminary detection sensitivity compares favorably with other laser-based spectrometric methods. This nonlinear laser technique is applicable to both fluorescing and nonfluorescing analytes.