E-mail: reinhard. Measuring distances in the range between a few centimetres and a few metres are of special interest for automated industrial LIBS applications. They allow for a reliable optical access to measuring objects in a process line under harsh industrial environments. In that range a compromise can be found between the conflicting requirements with respect to the protection of the optics facing the measuring object on one side, and sufficiently high laser irradiance and high receiving solid angle of the measuring radiation on the other side.
A concise overview about LIBS studies published in the last four years focusing on industrial applications or perspectives therefore is given. For measuring distances of only a few centimetres the size of a LIBS instrument can be downscaled significantly allowing to set up handheld LIBS analysers.
Whereas the precursors of such concepts were studied already more than fifteen years ago, quite recently a competitive market arose where various models of handheld LIBS systems are offered. Industrial application fields are mainly positive material identification of metals and sorting of light metal scraps for recycling purposes. A comparative synopsis of features of these LIBS systems will be presented and arising research themes in this context are outlined. Short WDs of a few centimetres enable narrow focusing of the laser beam and thus a high spatial resolution for chemical analysis as, e.
Section 6. At distances of typically 10—30 cm LIBS systems are identifying steel grades in rolling mills. During the last three to four years two main development directions for industrial LIBS applications become obvious as follows: on the one hand, stationary automated LIBS systems for inline measuring tasks embedded in a process line and, on the other hand, handheld LIBS units mainly for fast positive material identification.
Both branches reflect the unique feature of the LIBS method using a purely optical excitation of the measuring object over a distance which makes it predestinated for the fast analysis of metals and oxidic substances. In the same time period a number of publications appeared which are focusing on or giving at least a first perspective for industrial LIBS applications. From these hits, those publications were selected which provide a clear focus on industrial applications or have more than 5 citations thereby omitting those which present a dominantly fundamental study or are restricted mainly to evaluation algorithms or chemometrics or consider research in the microparticle or geological field.
