Quantitative determination of antimony in archaeological bronze artefacts by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Abstract

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a reliable, fast and micro-destructive diagnostic method for qualitative and quantitative analysis of a variety of materials. In this paper, we report the results of quantitative determination of antimony in four archaeological bronze artefacts analyzed by means of LIBS. For the purpose of this study, an approach of multi-elemental quantitative LIBS analysis is proposed, based on the use of an element with known concentration as an internal standard and measurement of the spectral lines intensities of the internal standard and the element with unknown concentration. An important plasma parameter which is included in the quantitative analysis is the excitation temperature as determined by the Boltzmann plot method. The quantity of antimony in the bronze artefacts obtained by means of the proposed LIBS approach is between 1.49% and 3.13%.