Determination of potassium in ceramic raw materials using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy combined with profile fitting.

Abstract

The determination of potassium (K) content in ceramic raw materials provides important references for ceramic sintering. To realize rapid, in situ, and real-time analysis detection, a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) system was set up to analyze K content in ceramic raw materials. However, the self-absorption was the serious influence on the accuracy of K element analysis. In this work, a method of profile fitting with Lorentz function was proposed to reduce the self-absorption effect in LIBS. After Lorentz fitting, the determination coefficient (R2 factor) for K element improved from 0.993 to 0.998, the root mean square error of cross-validation reduced from 0.458wt.% to 0.145wt.%, and the average relative error reduced from 13.769% to 5.121%. The results indicate that the Lorentz fitting can effectively reduce the self-absorption effect, and improve the accuracy of quantitative analysis for K element. According to the results, the proposed approach can be a promising method for determination of elements that suffer from self-absorption in LIBS.