Abstract

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is now recognized as a useful analytical tool for elemental analysis. However, to obtain a quantitative analysis using LIBS, one needs to control several parameters that can strongly affect the measurements. These parameters are for example, the amount of ablated and vaporized material, the property of plasma to absorb/reflect the delivered energy and the degree of ionization that can change as a function of laser wavelength and irradiance, the ambient gas nature and pressure, and the sample surface morphology. If all these parameters are set, and accounting for slight laser shot-to-shot variations in terms of laser beam energy and spatial profile, the spectral line intensities will generally be proportional to the elemental concentration.

© 2002 Optical Society of America