Rapid and Reliable Detection of Lithium in Water Sources Using Surface Enhanced Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (SENLIBS) on Aluminium Substrate

Lithium is one of the most important materials in re-chargeable battery as well as pharmaceutical and automotive industry. Due to the increasing demand for lithium for industrial production and daily usage, the reliable detection and recovery of lithium, a non-renewable metal, from water resources is an essential requirement. In this work, we performed lithium detection using surface enhanced laser induced breakdown spectroscopy on aluminium (Al) substrate for three different matrices, sea, river and municipal water. We also examined the matrix effect on sensitivity of lithium detection. Lithium spiked samples in different concentration (0- 100 ppm) was dried on an Al surface. The specific emission line of Li 670 nm was used for quantitative analysis. The intensity of Li was obtained about 15 times on Al substrate better than microscope glass. The limit of detection (LOD) value achieved to 0.138 ppm. No significant matrix effect was observed in the different water sources. Good reliability was obtained for intra and inter-day precision methods with RSD is <3.7% and<7.3% respectively in all water samples. Total analysis time including sample preparation is approximately in 1 min. We demonstrated that SENLIBS method provides rapid, high accuracy and repeatability of sensitive Li detection in different water sources.