Chinese researchers recently developed a novel method to improve the performance of the quantitative analysis of the application of components based on Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), which relies on implementation of flattop laser beam shaping and vector regression method.

This work was done by Prof. ZHANG Zhirong’s team in Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (AIOFM), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science.

In recent years, due to its outstanding advantages, such as, without complex sample pretreatment, multi-element rapid detection, and remote online analysis, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has become a focus in the field of environmental detection, space exploration, oil, gas and mineral resource exploration, agricultural product safety and industry production quality monitoring. However, because of the shortcomings of traditional LIBS technology detection, such as stability and poor sensitivity, it is difficult to apply in practice.

In their recent work, the diffractive optical element (DOE) was used to to convert the Gaussian laser beam of non-uniform energy distribution commonly used in the LIBS system into a flattop laser beam with uniform energy.

It could avoid the uneven ablation of the sample and improve the stability and sensitivity of the LIBS for the detection of the major and trace elements in the cement.

Meanwhile, the calibration curve and support vector regression method were combined used to quantitatively analyze the cement raw material samples and reduce matrix effect. This could improve the production quality and measure index of cement.
This work is of great significance for improving the detection performance of LIBS technology and promoting its practical application.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the External Cooperation Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Link to the paper: Analysis of element content in cement by Gaussian and flattop laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Detection of major and trace elements in cement by LIBS technology (Image by JIA Junwei)

Contact:

ZHOU Shu

Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (http://english.hf.cas.cn/)

Email: zhous@hfcas.ac.cn