Title : A powerful analytical tool for geosciences, environmental systems and their potential contaminants: Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy
Abstract:
The comment by Winefordner et al. (2004) that Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) would be the next superstar in analytical atomic spectrometry appears prescient, as LIBS has been investigated and found very performant for elemental analysis in many different applications. Since the turn of the century, LIBS technology has rapidly progressed from bespoke laboratory apparatus to commercial laboratory instruments, to systems appropriate for industrial analysis, to portable and then handheld analyzers to achieve in-situ, real-time chemical analysis in the field, even deployed on extraterrestrial Mars rovers. LIBS is a simple, straightforward, and highly versatile analytical technique that focuses a rapidly pulsed laser beam onto a sample to yield a plasma containing its constituent elements and then uses spectral analysis of emitted light to determine the material chemical composition. LIBS can be used for the rapid and simultaneous multi-element analysis of different types of geological media – solid (rocks, minerals, soils), liquid (natural waters, brines, hydrothermal fluids), or gas (e.g. ambient atmosphere, geogenic emissions, etc.). In principle, LIBS is capable of qualitative, semi-quantitative, and quantitative analysis of all elements in the periodic table both in the laboratory and outside for in situ analysis, being able also to perform rapid microscale compositional imaging. In this presentation the LIBS technique will be described, and LIBS applications to the analysis of minerals, rocks, soils and meteorites discussed and illustrated on the basis of personal work and literature review. Given the persistent need of analytical instrumentation for the rapid chemical analysis of geologic materials in the field, and the capability of LIBS to analyze any type of sample in real time with little to no preparation, there is a promising potential for routinary application of LIBS across a broad spectrum of geosciences which is as yet only minimally explored.
