Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy in industrial and security applications

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) offers rapid, localized chemical analysis of solid or liquid materials with high spatial resolution in lateral and depth profiling, without the need for sample preparation. Principal component analysis and partial least squares algorithms were applied to identify a variety of complex organic and inorganic samples. This work illustrates how LIBS analyzers can answer a multitude of real-world needs for rapid analysis, such as determination of lead in paint and children's toys, analysis of electronic and solder materials, quality control of fiberglass panels, discrimination of coffee beans from different vendors, and identification of generic versus brand-name drugs. Lateral and depth profiling was performed on children's toys and paint layers. Traditional one-element calibration or multivariate chemometric procedures were applied for elemental quantification, from single laser shot determination of metal traces at similar to 10 mu g/g to determination of halogens at 90 mu g/g using 50-shot spectral accumulation. The effectiveness of LIBS for security applications was demonstrated in the field by testing the 50-m standoff LIBS rasterizing detector. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America