LIBS Detection of Rare‐Earth Elements and Comparison with Other Techniques

This chapter discusses rare-earth (RE) elements, their importance, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) analysis. It provides some of the important results of LIBS detection of RE elements in geological sites, glasses, phosphor, etc. To detect RE elements in nuclear waste, mostly inductively coupled plasma (ICP) technique is used; however, due to preoperational safety and complexity of the experimental procedure, LIBS technique is in demand. In a few cases, to explore the potential of the LIBS technique, ICP is used to verify or compare the LIBS data. Fichet et al. investigated the complex aqueous solutions using a jet configuration with a collimated gas stream and compared the results with the standard ICP/optical emission spectroscopy (OES) technique. The ICP/OES procedure was found to be faster than LIBS, although the LIBS technique provides good results in terms of reliability. However, due to experimental limitations, LIBS technique performance is relatively less sensitive than ICP/OES.