Welcome to the second LIBS Summit!

It has been realized for several years that we are now at the threshold for LIBS to realize wide commercialization and it is of great importance to further improve the understanding of LIBS fundamentals, to build more optimized LIBS systems, to establish more sophisticated and accurate quantification methods, and to gain more application experience. To overcome the threshold, we initiated the international LIBS Summit in 2018 by setting the highest LIBS award in the world, called LIBS summit award or Chinese mini-Nobel prize of LIBS, to encourage researchers to make more contribution to LIBS technology and its application, and to educate young researchers in China to prepare for future achievements in LIBS.

The first LIBS summit was successfully held in July, 2019, Beijing and the LIBS summit awards was granted to Dr. Nicoló Omenetto for his contribution in LIBS fundamental study. Dr. Mohamad Sabsabi, Dr. Vincezo Palleschi and Dr. Javier Laserna were granted with the nomination award. The meeting encouraged the researchers all over the world and provided researchers in China an opportunity to communicate deeply with these top researchers on LIBS fundamental study. The special design of LIBS summit with 45 minutes question and answer session with the nominees made the experience and knowledge transfer very complete.

The second LIBS summit will be held on 17^th October, 2021 in Qingdao. It will be a joint ONLINE meeting with the fourth Asian Symposium on LIBS (ASLIBS 2021) which is hosted by Ocean University of China. The thematic topic of this summit will be focused on LIBS quantification. The tradition of a long discussion will be kept in the LIBS summit as we are expecting. Please join us and prepare questions from now. Please be aware that the LIBS Summit is free for registered attendees of ASLIBS 2021.

The meeting will be overseen by the LIBS committee, the Chinese Society of Optical Engineering.

Looking forward to your participation, let’s meet in Qingdao or ONLINE, at the 17^th of October, 2021!

LIBS quantification – approaches and results

The topic of "LIBS quantification" has been a key driver of the scientific and engineering work performed by the spectroscopic group at Fraunhofer-Institute of Laser Technology (ILT) in Aachen, Germany. LIBS quantification is decisive to enable a transfer of R&D work on LIBS into industrial applications.

Within a time span of more than two decades the main focus has been put on the following analytical matrices: steel and aluminum; soils, polymers, cement, refractories, waste electronic electric equipment (WEEE); slags; coatings (Zn, Al); particulate matter. The presentation will give an overview on aspects of quantification, analytical performance, various LIBS set-ups and LIBS systems for industrial use and shows quantitative results gained with these.

Calibration-Free LIBS

The topic of the 2021 Award is quantification by LIBS. This will give me the opportunity to speak about Calibration-Free LIBS, the analytical method that I have developed, together with my colleagues Alessandro Ciucci, Simone Rastelli and Elisabetta Tognoni, more than 20 years ago. The paper firstly describing the method, published in 1999, is the most quoted research paper, excluding reviews and books, in the history of LIBS. It should be assumed that everyone working in LIBS would know at least the basic principles of the method, which completely overcomes the problems associated with matrix effect in LIBS and allows for a fast standardless analysis of all kinds of materials. In my talk, I will start from the fundamental hypotheses underlying the CF-LIBS method to then introduce the important improvements that I and my group have made to the original idea. I will introduce the method I’ve devised for compensating the effect of self-absorption in CF-LIBS analysis, the improvements of the technique that can be achieved exploiting a 3D (time-resolved) Boltzmann plot, up to the recent development of the One-Point Calibration method, which greatly improves the trueness of the CF-LIBS technique, and the integration of CF-LIBS with Artificial Neural Networks for fast standardless mapping and compositional quantitative analysis of complex (inhomogeneous) materials.

Progress and frontiers in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is currently considered one of the most active research areas in the field of analytical spectroscopy. LIBS has emerged as a powerful alternative for chemical analysis in a wide front of applications, from geological exploration to industrial inspection, from environmental monitoring to biomedical and forensic analysis, from cultural heritage to homeland security. Development of LIBS instruments with extended capabilities for energy dosage to the sample using ultrashort laser pulses has been undertaken which have permitted a better understanding of the underlying issues of LIBS –notably, laser interaction with matter, plasma dynamics and properties. Significant progress in chemical information from the traditional ns monopulse ablation to multipulse, multiwavelength excitation has occurred in the last decade. These advances have resulted in substantial improvements in detection limits and method precision and accuracy. While LIBS certainly has practical utility in many laboratory-based chemical measurements, the true potential of this technology becomes apparent when it is used for applications inaccessible to more conventional analytical techniques. Underwater LIBS analysis and inspection of the elemental composition of distant objects constitute examples of the exclusive capabilities of LIBS. In this lecture an overview of LIBS from the original concepts to the current technology is presented. LIBS research of relevance to contemporary chemical analysis including both innovative performance breakthroughs and emerging applications will be discussed.

Quantitative aspects of Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy: A personal overview of achievements on the LIBS technology path, past, present and perspectives

LIBS technique involves several fields of science, such as laser–matter interaction, plasma physics, atomic physics, plasma chemistry, spectroscopy, electro-optics, and signal processing. The LIBS plasma is transient, unlike an inductively coupled plasma, arc plasma, or glow discharge plasma, which are all stationary. This characteristic dictates some restrictions on the ability to transfer tools used with other emission spectroscopy techniques to LIBS. Therefore, the development of LIBS over the years has been closely tied to the development of enabling tools and ongoing improvements in their performance. During the last three decades, extensive research has been carried out to improve LIBS performance. Meanwhile, dynamic technological development in the field of solid state lasers, electro-optical detectors, and signal processing was successfully harnessed for LIBS. The analytical performance of LIBS for a multi-element analysis now achieves a level that is equal, or even some cases better, to that of classical methods. LIBS is currently considered one of the most active research areas in the field of analytical spectroscopy. In this presentation, I will highlight the most significant research contributions for quantitative analysis by LIBS carried out in our laboratory at. I will present our novel approaches aimed at the improvement of the analytical figure of merit of LIBS. Finally, a personal viewpoint on the LIBS development and its future will be given.

Recent advances in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy quantification: From fundamental understanding to data processing

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is regarded as the future superstar for chemical analysis, but the relatively high measurement uncertainty and error remain the persistent challenges for its technological development as well as wide applications. In this presentation, I will summarize the generation mechanisms of measurement uncertainty and explain how signal uncertainty and matrix effects impact quantification performance. Furthermore, I will discuss the methods for raw signal improvement including sample preparation, system optimization, and especially plasma modulation, which modulates the laser-induced plasma evolution process for higher signal repeatability and signal-to-noise ratio. I will also discuss different mathematical quantification methods including calibration-free methods and calibration methods, which can be classified into physical-principle based calibration model, data-driven based calibration model, and hybrid model. Finally, I will summarize and recommend a framework of quantification improvement strategy including key steps and main way-out for LIBS future development.