Abstract
Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is fast, on-line, causes little sample damage, and can be applied in remote field locations. In recent years, LIBS has been widely used in many fields of scientific research for element detection. Further application of LIBS is limited by the strong matrix effect, poor repeatability, and relatively weak detection sensitivity. The detection sensitivity is an important factor and needs to be improved for LIBS detection of minor or trace elements in samples. A variety of methods have been developed for this. In this invited review paper, we discusse improvements in the LIBS detection sensitivity achieved with physical enhancement methods, chemical enhancement methods, mathematical methods, and combinations of multiple methods. We discuss the enhancement mechanisms, sensitivity improvements, configurations, and effects of key factors for various methods. The advantages, disadvantages, and real-time capabilities of these methods are reviewed. Finally, new trends and future perspectives for LIBS as an efficient analytical tool are highlighted.
Highlights
Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is an effective technique for rapid elemental analysis
This review presents a brief overview of recent methods used for improving the LIBS detection sensitivity
The results showed that the R2 of calibration curve was improved from 0.810 to 0.988 using long-short doublepulse LIBS (DP-LIBS) compared to SP-LIBS
Summary
Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is an effective technique for rapid elemental analysis. Some researchers have obtained a 3-fold signal enhancement with collinear dual-beam detection of lunar mimics [48] The drawback of this method is that the two laser pulses can only work in a collinear mode and the focus position has to be consistent. The spectral signal was enhanced about 3–7 times by long-short DPLIBS comparing to conventional SP-LIBS when detecting the standard steel samples [51]. An interesting method named resonant DP-LIBS has been proposed to achieve spectral enhancement In this case, the second laser is replaced by an optical parametric oscillator wavelength-tunable laser to reheat the plasma. Kim et al [56] injected argon (25 L/min) into a sample chamber to increase the signal intensities of the main elements by 2–3 times when
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