A Review of Membrane-Facilitated Liquid-Solid Conversion: Adding Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) Multi-Applicability for Metal Analysis

Abstract

Water splashing and evaporation are challenging aspects in Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) analysis when it comes to aqueous analyte. By converting the liquid sample into solid, among many other methods, one can improve the analytical performance of LIBS. Membrane is a type of material which can be used to facilitate liquid-solid conversion through various procedures; drop-wising, adsorption, filtration, and phase inversion. In a spotlight, ion exchange membrane allows LIBS technique to analyze the specific heavy metal ion species. This review article reports on advancement of membrane-facilitated liquid-solid conversion to enhance LIBS quantitative analysis of aqueous metals. Such method had been reported to generate low limit of detections (LODs), even up to sub µg/kg. The accuracy and precision produced by the reported methods were not significantly different to that obtained from conventional analytical techniques, such as Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). In conclusion, the use of membrane to convert the analyte can add the application of LIBS for multiple purposes with a satisfying analytical performance.