Applications

Applied Spectra's LIBS technology has a wide range of real-world applications for elemental analysis — from metal alloys to organic materials — and much more. Here are a few examples:

RoHS compliance testing for electronic components

With the global push to adopt the Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical Electronic and Equipment (WEEE) directives, there is an increasing need for component manufacturers in the electronic supply chain to monitor RoHS-banned substances in materials used for electronics manufacturing. The impacted elements under RoHS regulation are lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and bromine. LIBS can effectively detect and quantify these elements in:

LIBS is an excellent elemental testing technique for small electronic parts, thin wire, and thin-plating materials where low signal and the possible interference from the substrate underneath may make traditional XRF analysis challenging.

A major US flash memory manufacturer has adopted ASI’s LIBS solution to monitor Pb in their leadframes and FBGA products. to discover how we can help your meet RoHS compliance challenges.

Raw quartz material and solar silicon feedstock analysis

Recent events have led to explosive growth for innovative crystalline (c-Si) solar silicon manufacturing processes, in order to drive down the overall manufacturing cost of producing solar cells. The solar industry has considered next generation solar-grade silicon with lower purity (~ 5N to 6N) that is significantly more cost-effective. However, elemental impurities such as Fe, Al, Ca, Ti, Ni, Cu, Cr, B, and P are known to influence minority carrier life time and ultimately degrade the efficiency of solar cells.

By using rapid on-line LIBS elemental analysis, quality control professionals can monitor elemental impurities during solar silicon production. Additionally, with frequent chemical characterization of their incoming Si raw materials, solar cell manufacturers can control costs and maintain the consistency of solar cell performance in their finished products.

For solar silicon production, LIBS provides cost-effective analytical solutions for:

to learn how LIBS can increase the analytical throughput for your solar silicon impurity analysis.

Plant and soil analysis

The ability of LIBS technology to quickly perform elemental surveys and quantify elemental concentrations in plants and soils is enabling research into ecological topics such as:

Based on traditional elemental techniques involving wet acid dissolution (ICP-OES and AA), the entire plant fibers and the soils must be digested. This process is time-consuming and tedious, and requires heavy use of toxic acids, often limiting the number of samples and the frequency of data collection. With LIBS, elemental analysis can be performed quickly either in a lab setting (models RT100-HP and RT100-Ec) or in the field (PL100-GEO). The increased analytical throughput with LIBS enables environmental/ecological researchers to consider a higher volume of plant and soil samples per study, leading to more statistically meaningful conclusions.

to discover how to move your plant and soil analysis into the field using LIBS.

Addtional applications

Applied Spectra’s Analytical Application Group strongly encourages interested website visitors to check back soon for customer application notes in these areas:

For more immediate assistance on LIBS applications, please