The first part of this two-part review focused on the fundamental and diagnostics aspects of laser-induced plasmas, only touching briefly upon concepts such as sensitivity and detection limits and largely omitting any discussion of the vast panorama of the practical applications of the technique. Clearly a true LIBS community has emerged, which promises to quicken the pace of LIBS developments, applications, and implementations. With this second part, a more applied flavor is taken, and its intended goal is summarizing the current state-of-the-art of analytical LIBS, providing a contemporary snapshot of LIBS applications, and highlighting new directions in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, such as novel approaches, instrumental developments, and advanced use of chemometric tools. More specifically, we discuss instrumental and analytical approaches (e.g., double- and multi-pulse LIBS to improve the sensitivity), calibration-free approaches, hyphenated approaches in which techniques such as Raman and fluorescence are coupled with LIBS to increase sensitivity and information power, resonantly enhanced LIBS approaches, signal processing and optimization (e.g., signal-to-noise analysis), and finally applications. An attempt is made to provide an updated view of the role played by LIBS in the various fields, with emphasis on applications considered to be unique. We finally try to assess where LIBS is going as an analytical field, where in our opinion it should go, and what should still be done for consolidating the technique as a mature method of chemical analysis.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1366/11-06574

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), part II: review of instrumental and methodological approaches to material analysis and applications to different fields.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has become a very popular analytical method in the last decade in view of some of its unique features such as applicability to any type of sample, practically no sample preparation, remote sensing capability, and speed of analysis The technique has a remarkably wide applicability in many fields, and the number of applications is still growing From an analytical point of view, the quantitative aspects of LIBS may be considered its Achilles' heel, first due to the complex nature of the laser–sample interaction processes, which depend upon both the laser characteristics and the sample material properties, and second due to the plasma–particle interaction processes, which are space and time dependent Together, these may cause undesirable matrix effects Ways of alleviating these problems rely upon the description of the plasma excitation-ionization processes through the use of classical equilibrium relations and therefore on the assumption that the laser-induced 

Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Part I: Review of Basic Diagnostics and Plasma–Particle Interactions: Still-Challenging Issues Within the Analytical Plasma Community

By L I Sedov London: Cleaver-Hume Press Ltd Pp xvi + 363 Price 105s This is really two separate books within the same pair of covers First of all Chapters 1-3, some 145 pages, are devoted to the discussion of similarity and dimensional, methods and their application to a variety of problems in mechanics and fluid mechanics

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9112/11/6/008/pdf

Similarity and Dimensional Methods in Mechanics

Characterization of laser induced plasmas by optical emission spectroscopy: A review of experiments and methods

Double pulse laser ablation and plasma: Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy signal enhancement

Femtosecond laser (Ti:sapphire, 100 fs pulse duration) ablation of silicon in air was compared with nanosecond laser (Nd:YAG, 3 ns pulse duration) ablation at ultraviolet wavelength (266 nm) Laser ablation efficiency was studied by measuring crater depth as a function of pulse number For the same number of laser pulses, the fs-ablated crater was about two times deeper than the ns-crater The temperature and electron number density of the laser-induced plasma were determined from spectroscopic measurements The electron number density and temperature of fs-induced plasmas decreased faster than ns-induced plasmas due to different energy deposition mechanisms Images of the laser-induced plasma were obtained with femtosecond time-resolved laser shadowgraph imaging Plasma expansion in both the perpendicular and the lateral directions were compared

Experimental investigation of ablation efficiency and plasma expansion during femtosecond and nanosecond laser ablation of silicon

Femtosecond and nanosecond lasers were compared for ablating brass alloys. All operating parameters from both lasers were equal except for the pulse duration. The ablated aerosol vapor was collected on silicon substrates for particle size measurements or sent into an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer. The diameters and size distribution of particulates were measured from scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of the collected ablated aerosol. SEM measurements showed that particles ablated using nanosecond pulses were single spherical entities ranging in diameter from several micrometers to several hundred nanometers. Primary particles ablated using femtosecond ablation were ∼100 nm in diameter but formed large agglomerates. ICPMS showed enhanced signal intensity and stability using femtosecond compared to nanosecond laser ablation.

/pdf/nanosecond-and-femtosecond-laser-ablation-of-brass-29ppo0d3q9.pdf

Nanosecond and femtosecond laser ablation of brass: Particulate and ICPMS measurements

Plasma diagnostics during laser ablation in a cavity

Time-resolved plasma properties for double pulsed laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy of silicon☆

The propagation of laser-induced shockwaves from ablation inside of cavities was determined from time-resolved shadowgraph images. The temperature and electron number density of the laser-induced plasma was determined from spectroscopic measurements. These properties were compared to those for laser ablation on the flat surface under the same energy and background gas condition. A theoretical model was proposed to determine the amount of energy and vaporized mass stored in the vapor plume based on these measurements.

Xianzhong Zeng

Papers

Experimental investigation of ablation efficiency and plasma expansion during femtosecond and nanosecond laser ablation of silicon

Nanosecond and femtosecond laser ablation of brass: Particulate and ICPMS measurements

Plasma diagnostics during laser ablation in a cavity

Time-resolved plasma properties for double pulsed laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy of silicon☆

Laser-induced shockwave propagation from ablation in a cavity