Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Part II: Review of Instrumental and Methodological Approaches to Material Analysis and Applications to Different Fields

Abstract

The first part of this two-part review focused on the fundamental and diagnostics aspects of laser-induced plasmas, only touching briefly upon concepts such as sensitivity and detection limits and largely omitting any discussion of the vast panorama of the practical applications of the technique. Clearly a true LIBS community has emerged, which promises to quicken the pace of LIBS developments, applications, and implementations. With this second part, a more applied flavor is taken, and its intended goal is summarizing the current state-of-the-art of analytical LIBS, providing a contemporary snapshot of LIBS applications, and highlighting new directions in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, such as novel approaches, instrumental developments, and advanced use of chemometric tools. More specifically, we discuss instrumental and analytical approaches (e.g., double- and multi-pulse LIBS to improve the sensitivity), calibration-free approaches, hyphenated approaches in which techniques such as Raman and fluorescence are coupled with LIBS to increase sensitivity and information power, resonantly enhanced LIBS approaches, signal processing and optimization (e.g., signal-to-noise analysis), and finally applications. An attempt is made to provide an updated view of the role played by LIBS in the various fields, with emphasis on applications considered to be unique. We finally try to assess where LIBS is going as an analytical field, where in our opinion it should go, and what should still be done for consolidating the technique as a mature method of chemical analysis.

Multianalytical characterization of Late Roman glasses including nanosecond and femtosecond laser induced breakdown spectroscopy

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] As no material pre-treatment is needed and due to the swiftness of analysis, this technique offers an attractive solution for a wide range of applications. [8][9][10][11] The analytical performance of LIBS depends strongly on the choice of experimental conditions that influence the laser-produced plasma characteristics.…”

Multi-wavelength Brillouin Fiber Laser with Fiber Bragg Grating Employs Loop Mirror

“…The advantages of fiber laser in mainly due to better reliability lifetime, high power, high stability, low amplitude noise, high output stability, immune to tough environment changes, low threshold power and narrow line width [8]. These advantages have extensive application such as optical sensing [9], optical filtering [10], narrow-bandwidth amplification [11], high-resolution spectroscopy [12], and optical fiber communications.…”

Normalization of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy spectra using a plastic optical fiber light collector and acoustic sensor device

“…The LIBS technique requires little or no sample preparation, and it is a versatile method that enables in-field applications, such as identification of pigments in paintings, analysis of archeological findings, detection of contaminants in air, water, or soil, or, more recently, geological analysis in space exploration [2,3].…”