The deep sea is rich in mineral resources. The exploration and development of more resources is the hot spot of the world mineral resources exploration and development. In deep-sea resource exploration, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has the advantages of fast detection speed, no need for sample predobrada, real-time in-situ, and can be applied to liquids. Međutim, in the the high-pressure water environment of the deep ocean, the spectral signal is more difficult to be excited, and the sensitivity of LIBS detection is affected.
The LIBS team of Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed a method to create a gas environment in deep-sea high-pressure water environment, which enhances the spectral signals of solid samples in deep-sea high-pressure water, and improves the effect of LIBS deep-sea detection. The related research results were published as Study on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy in high-pressure helium gas environment for deep ocean applications, published in Talanta.
In a high-pressure water environment, the study utilized a probe to transport helium gas to the surface of a solid sample; the gas in turn expelled water from the sample surface, creating a high-pressure gas environment. The study was carried out to characterize the LIBS at different pressures. The experiments proved that the method of creating a gas environment by passing helium can effectively enhance the LIBS signals, and effective spectral data were obtained at 60 MPa (corresponding to the pressure of 6000 m of water in the deep sea). The experimental results show that increasing the laser energy and shortening the laser transmission distance in the high-pressure gas can effectively enhance the spectral signal intensity, and are different from the conclusions in the high-pressure water body environment. The above study demonstrates that the method of transforming the water environment into a gas environment can effectively reduce the impact of high-pressure water on LIBS detection, providing a new solution for in situ detection of deep-sea minerals.
The research is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China.
Struktura of eksperimentalna oprema za duboko-more laserski inducirano kvar spektroskopija (LIBS)
