POLYMER IDENTIFICATION USING LASER INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY (LIBS)

It is expected that in future years humanitarian missions for Improvised Explosive Devices (TED) clearance will be conducted to secure safe transit of people and goods, particularly in Colombian rural areas. Among the technologies that help humanitarian demining missions, laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has the potential to identify explosives and the materials used in the manufacture of LED casings. In this work a laboratory LIBS system was used to identify and characterize five polymers used in IED casing: polyvinyl chloride, high density polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, polystyrene and polypropylene. Identification using lineal correlation was possible when polymer spectra were compared with spectra libraries of other samples and at least five single shot spectra were averaged in a spectral window centered at 255 nm.