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LIBS research and development

LIBS Characteristic

LIBS is a technique capable of fast and even in-situ and stand-off elemental analysis. In LIBS, high energy laser pulse is focused on sample surface to ablate small amount of material (few ng) and luminous laser-induced plasma (LIP) is created. Characteristic spectral lines detected in LIP radiation provide qualitative and quantitative information about chemical composition of investigated objects.

Advantages of LIBS analysis

real-time, contactless with no need for sample preparation,
ability to provide chemical analysis of samples in solid, liquid or gaseous states,
capability to indentify majority of chemical elements (including C, S, P, Mg, Li, Na, etc.),
detection limits typically in ppm (μg/g level),
capability of in-situ remote/stand-off sensing (up to 30 m) in inaccessible and/or hazardous environments.

LIBS Applications

In general, LIBS can be utilized wherever the real-time chemical analysis of materials is demanded, with primary aim on investigation of elemental composition of solid samples.

Applications:

clinical research (detection of nanoparticles and heavy metals in organs),
foundry and metallurgy (detection of C, S, P; fast on-line quality control),
automotive (characterization of thin surfaces; selective detection of elements in material layers),
mining and extraterrestrial research (rock identification, quantification of trace elements),
agriculture and environmental diagnostics (detection of fertilizers and toxicity contamination),
archaeology, forensics (e.g. braking track detection), civil engineering, etc.

Laboratory of Laser Spectroscopy has been involved in numerous projects so far, e.g. analysis of algal biomass for industrial biotechnology, tracing the nanoparticles in organic materials for pharmacology, estimation of the corrosion degree of metals, investigation of the metal accumulation in vegetal tissues, depth profile analysis of zinc-coated steel, multielemental analysis of prehistoric animal teeth, classification of brick samples and igneous rocks, etc.

LIBS Laboratory

Laboratory of Laser Spectroscopy has 20 years of experince in the field of laser spectroscopy, including basic and applied research and high-end LIBS instruments development. LIBS laboratory disposes of all necessary equipment for the implementation of single-pulse LIBS and also double-pulse LIBS (with increased detection limits), LIBS + LIFS (Laser-Induced Fluorescence Spectroscopy). Direct analysis of liquids using LIBS is possible owing to the custom in-house built module. In-situ analysis of samples employing remote LIBS (by optical fibre) and stand-off LIBS (via air) systems. In 2014 a CEITEC BUT start-up company AtomTrace (www.atomtrace.com) was established, providing commercialization of LIBS technology and its transfer to industry.

The key equipment:

Modular LIBS interaction chamber was developed in the frame of Czech national grant project in cooperation with Tescan company (Czech Republic, focusing on electron microscopy). This interaction chamber is a suitable expansion of conventional table-top LIBS system enabling precise positioning of the sample, measurement in vacuum conditions and atmospheres of He, Ar, N and CO2, optimized collection optics and special software for analysis of detected spektra.
Despite the LIBS interaction chamber, the table-top LIBS system at CEITEC consists of high energy Nd:YAG solid state lasers Quantell Brilliant B, Solar LQ-529a and tunable Ti:Sa laser Solar Carat LX-325 (utilized for LIFS analysis), spectrometers Andor Mechelle 5000 (echelle configuration) and Lot Oriel 260 (Czerny-Turner configuration), ICCD detector Andor iStar, ICCD detector Princeton Instruments Pi-MAX3 and ICCD Jobin Yvon Horiba.
Stand-off LIBS system (rLIBS) was specially designed for in-situ and real-time analysis of hard to reach and/or hazardous/toxic samples. This device is composed of high energy laser BigSky Ultra CFR 400, Newtonian telescope for the collection of LIP radiation, spectrometer Catalina EMU and EMCCD detector Raptor Falcon.

In collaboration with laboratories at CEITEC at Masaryk University (Brno, CZ), LIBS laboratory can also offer the comparative measurements of samples by the Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) technique. Complementary molecular analysis of samples using Raman spectroscopy can be provided in cooperation with Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Brno, Czech Republic).