¹Giorgio S. Senesi, ²Gioacchino Tempesta, ³Paola Manzari, ²Giovanna Agrosì
Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research (in Press) Link to Article [DOI: 10.1111/ggr.12126]
¹Istituto di Nanotecnologia (NANOTEC) – PLASMI Lab, CNR, Bari, Italy
²Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e Geoambientali (DiSTeGeo), University of Bari, Bari, Italy
³Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (INAF-IAPS), Roma, Italy
Published by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons

An innovative approach of double pulse laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (DP-LIBS) coupled with optical microscopy was applied to the characterisation and quantitative analysis of the Agoudal iron meteorite in bulk sample and in petrographic thin section. Qualitative analysis identified the elements Ca, Co, Fe, Ga, Li and Ni in the thin section and the whole meteorite. Two different methods, calibration-free LIBS and one-point calibration LIBS, were used as complementary methodologies for quantitative LIBS analysis. The elemental composition data obtained by LIBS were in good agreement with the compositional analyses obtained by traditional methods generally applied for the analysis of meteorites, such as ICP-MS and EDS-SEM. Besides the recognised advantages of LIBS over traditional techniques, including versatility, minimal destructivity, lack of waste production, low operating costs, rapidity of analysis, availability of transportable or portable systems, etc., additional advantages of this technique in the analysis of meteorites are precision and accuracy, sensitivity to low atomic number elements such as Li and the capacity to detect and quantify Co contents that cannot be obtained by EDS-SEM.