A review of the current analytical approaches for evaluating, compensating and exploiting self-absorption in Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

In this paper a review of different approaches for handling the self-absorption effect in Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) applications is presented. From an analytical point of view, self-absorption is a major issue affecting the accuracy of LIBS quantitative analysis. Self-absorption impacts emission line profiles and intensities, resulting in non-linear calibration curves and influencing the estimation of the sample composition. The main purpose of this work is presenting a summary of the experimental parameters giving raise to self-absorption and a thorough study of the different strategies for its estimation, compensation and exploitation in order to improve the analytical accuracy of the LIBS technique.