Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy for monitoring the molten phase desulfurization process of blister copper.

The development of real-time monitoring sensors for pyro-metallurgical processes is an analytical challenge, mainly due to adverse environmental conditions, high spectral interferences and multiphase (molten and gas) reactions. This work demonstrates the suitability of stand-off LIBS (ST-LIBS) for real time monitoring of the desulfurization of blister copper which is carried out in molten phase. Here sulfur is removed by the formation of SO by supplying oxygen in molten phase.

Combining prior knowledge with input selection algorithms for quantitative analysis using neural networks in laser induced breakdown spectroscopy.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is an emerging technique for the analysis of rocks and mineral samples. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been used to estimate the concentration of minerals in samples from LIBS spectra. These spectra are very high dimensional data, and it is known that only specific wavelengths have information on the atomic and molecular features of the sample under investigation.

Single-frequency fiber laser based on a fiber ring resonator filter tunable in a broad range from 1023 nm to 1107 nm.

We present a broadly tunable single-frequency ytterbium-doped fiber laser. Its broadband tunability is made possible by low resonator losses. The wavelength is determined by a grating filter, while the single-frequency regime is achieved by filtering the longitudinal modes in a fiber ring resonance filter.

Real-time fingerprinting of structural isomers using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy.

Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has surfaced as an attractive alternative to mass spectrometry and wet chemistry methods for chemical identification, driven by its real-time, label-free nature. Rapid analysis needs, especially in high-energy materials and pharmaceutical compounds, have further fueled an increasing number of refinements in LIBS. Yet, isomers are seldom identifiable by LIBS as they generate nearly identical spectra.

Less is more: Avoiding the LIBS dimensionality curse through judicious feature selection for explosive detection.

Despite its intrinsic advantages, translation of laser induced breakdown spectroscopy for material identification has been often impeded by the lack of robustness of developed classification models, often due to the presence of spurious correlations. While a number of classifiers exhibiting high discriminatory power have been reported, efforts in establishing the subset of relevant spectral features that enable a fundamental interpretation of the segmentation capability and avoid the 'curse of dimensionality' have been lacking. Using LIBS data acquired from a set of secondary explosives, we investigate judicious feature selection approaches and architect two different chemometrics classifiers -based on feature selection through prerequisite knowledge of the sample composition and genetic algorithm, respectively.

Non-gated laser induced breakdown spectroscopy provides a powerful segmentation tool on concomitant treatment of characteristic and continuum emission.

We demonstrate the application of non-gated laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) for characterization and classification of organic materials with similar chemical composition. While use of such a system introduces substantive continuum background in the spectral dataset, we show that appropriate treatment of the continuum and characteristic emission results in accurate discrimination of pharmaceutical formulations of similar stoichiometry. Specifically, our results suggest that near-perfect classification can be obtained by employing suitable multivariate analysis on the acquired spectra, without prior removal of the continuum background.

Incorporation of support vector machines in the LIBS toolbox for sensitive and robust classification amidst unexpected sample and system variability.

Despite the intrinsic elemental analysis capability and lack of sample preparation requirements, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has not been extensively used for real-world applications, e.g., quality assurance and process monitoring.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy-based investigation and classification of pharmaceutical tablets using multivariate chemometric analysis.

We report the effectiveness of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) in probing the content of pharmaceutical tablets and also investigate its feasibility for routine classification. This method is particularly beneficial in applications where its exquisite chemical specificity and suitability for remote and on site characterization significantly improves the speed and accuracy of quality control and assurance process. Our experiments reveal that in addition to the presence of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, which can be primarily attributed to the active pharmaceutical ingredients, specific inorganic atoms were also present in all the tablets.