Accuracy improvement on polymer identification using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy with adjusting spectral weightings.

A new approach to polymer identification by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) with adjusting spectral weightings (ASW) was developed in this work aiming at improving the identification accuracy. This approach has been achieved through increasing the intensities of specific characteristic spectral lines which are important to polymer identification but difficult to be excited. Using the ASW method, the identification accuracies of all 11 polymers were increased to nearly 100%, while the accuracies of PE, PU, PP and PC were only 98%, 74%, 90% and 98%, respectively, without using the ASW method.