• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.48 no.12
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• pp.1013-1020
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• 2020

Spark-induced breakdown spectroscopy (SIBS) utilizes an electric spark to induce a strong plasma for collecting atomic emissions. This study analyses the potential for usinga compact SIBS instead of conventional laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) in discriminating rocks and soils for planetary missions. Targeting bulky solids using SIBS has not been successful in the past, and therefore a series of optimizations of electrode positioning and electrode materials were performed in this work. The limit of detection (LOD) was enhanced up to four times compared to when LIBS was used, showing a change from 78 to 20 ppm from LIBS to SIBS. Because of the higher energy of plasma generated, the signal intensity by SIBS was higher than LIBS in three orders of magnitude with the same spectrometer setup. Changing the electrode material and locating the optimum position of the electrodes were considered for optimizing the current SIBS setup being tested for samples of planetary origin.