Preliminary study of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy for Mg/Ca investigation in cultured scallop shells

The element ratio of Mg/Ca is a primary proxy in studying the composition of seashells, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a practical technique for elemental analysis. In this work, we tried to apply LIBS to investigate the Mg/Ca ratio in cultured seashells of two scallop species (Chlamys farreri and Patinopecten yessoensis). It was found that LIBS was capable of tracking Mg/Ca variation on the cross section of the scallop shell (Chlamys farreri), and the variation trend was well verified by the measurement of SEM-EDS. Based on this, LIBS detection was carried out for Mg/Ca investigation on another species of the scallop shell (Patinopecten yessoensis), and the intensity ratio of Mg/Ca presented a similar variation to δ18O measurement under mass spectroscopy. The result also indicated that the LIBS technique is appropriate in the Mg/Ca investigation for scallop shells, and in cultured scallops, the Mg/Ca ratio would be equally useful for tracking temperature variations. In the future, LIBS is expected to be developed as a diagnostic tool in seashell cultivation, and more elemental compositions would be involved in this kind of investigation.