Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy with multi-kHz fibre laser for mobile metal analysis tasks — A comparison of different analysis methods and with a mobile spark-discharge optical emission spectroscopy apparatus

The identification and separation of different alloys are a permanent task of crucial importance in the metal recycling industry. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) offers important advantages in comparison to the state-of-the-art techniques for this application. For LIBS measurement no additional sample preparation is necessary. The overall analysis time is much smaller than for the state-of-the-art techniques. The LIBS setup presented in this study enables mobile operation with a handheld probe for the analysis of metallic materials. Excitation source is a fibre laser with a repetition rate of 30 kHz and a pulse energy of 1.33 mJ. The compact optical setup allows measurements at almost every point of a sample within 5 ms. The generated plasma light is analysed using a Multi-CCD spectrometer. The broad spectral coverage and high resolution provide an outstanding amount of spectroscopic information thereby enabling a variety of calibration approaches. Using a set of Al-based and a set of Fe-based samples the analytical performance of uni- and multivariate calibrations is evaluated. The same sample sets are analysed with a commercial state-of-the-art spark-discharge optical emission spectrometer allowing an assessment of the achieved results. Even though the possible analytical correctness of the fibre laser based LIBS measurements is found to similar or even better than that of the conventional technique, advantages of the multivariate data evaluation have not yet been realised in the investigations. However, due to the in situ sample preparation and short measurement times, fibre-laser based LIBS offers superior features. - Highlights: • Mobile, hand-guided LIBS apparatus for metal analysis, even for steel • Comparable results as state-of-the-art SD-OES instrument • New sectioned calibration function resulting in smaller deviations • Comparison of univariate and multivariate analysis methods