Application of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy to the analysis of metals in soils

In this paper, the influence of plasma temperature on quantitative laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) measurements is discussed, and a simple theoretical approach is used to model the plasma generation. It is shown that an estimate of the temperature of the laser-induced plasma and its inclusion in a model for line emission allows for substantial reduction of the matrix effect. To illustrate the benefits of the proposed correction, some experimental results, obtained with the use of some reference sample soils, are finally presented.