Comparison of Calibration Curve Method and Partial Least Square Method in the Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy Quantitative Analysis

The Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) is a fast, non-contact, no sample preparation analytic technology; it is very suitable for on-line analysis of alloy composition. In the copper smelting industry, analysis and control of the copper alloy concentration affect the quality of the products greatly, so LIBS is an efficient quantitative analysis technology in the copper smelting industry. But for the lead brass, the components of Pb, Al and Ni elements are very low and the atomic emission lines are easily submerged under copper complex characteristic spectral lines because of the matrix effects. So it is difficult to get the online quantitative result of these important elements. In this paper, both the partial least squares (PLS) method and the calibration curve (CC) method are used to quantitatively analyze the laser induced breakdown spectroscopy data which is obtained from the standard lead brass alloy samples. Both the major and trace elements were quantitatively analyzed. By comparing the two results of the different calibration method, some useful results were obtained: both for major and trace elements, the PLS method was better than the CC method in quantitative analysis. And the regression coefficient of PLS method is compared with the original spectral data with background interference to explain the advantage of the PLS method in the LIBS quantitative analysis. Results proved that the PLS method used in laser induced breakdown spectroscopy was suitable for simultaneous quantitative analysis of different content elements in copper smelting industry.