Tablet physical-mechanical properties; Density; Porosity; Tablet breaking force; Pharmacopeial methods; Emerging technologies;NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY; INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY; LIGHT-INDUCED FLUORESCENCE; BREAKING STRENGTH TESTERS; AMYLOSE STARCH TABLETS; X-RAY MICROTOMOGRAPHY; AIR-COUPLED ACOUSTICS; PHARMACEUTICAL TABLETS; RAMAN-SPECTROSCOPY; COATING THICKNESS

The density, porosity, breaking force, viscoelastic properties, and the presence or absence of any structural defects or irregularities are important physical-mechanical quality attributes of popular solid dosage forms like tablets. The irregularities associated with these attributes may influence the drug product functionality. Thus, an accurate and efficient characterization of these properties is critical for successful development and manufacturing of a robust tablets. These properties are mainly analyzed and monitored with traditional pharmacopeial and non-pharmacopeial methods. Such methods are associated with several challenges such as lack of spatial resolution, efficiency, or sample-sparing attributes. Recent advances in technology, design, instrumentation, and software have led to the emergence of newer techniques for non-invasive characterization of physical-mechanical properties of tablets. These techniques include near infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray microtomography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging, terahertz pulsed imaging, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, and various acoustic-and thermal-based techniques. Such state-of-the-art techniques are currently applied at various stages of development and manufacturing of tablets at industrial scale. Each technique has specific advantages or challenges with respect to operational efficiency and cost, compared to traditional analytical methods. Currently, most of these techniques are used as secondary analytical tools to support the traditional methods in characterizing or monitoring tablet quality attributes. Therefore, further development in the instrumentation and software, and studies on the applications are necessary for their adoption in routine analysis and monitoring of tablet physical-mechanical properties.

LASER-INDUCED BREAKDOWN; PLASMA-MASS SPECTROMETRY; RESOLUTION CONTINUUM SOURCE; PARTICLE ICP-MS; RAY-FLUORESCENCE SPECTROMETRY; MULTI-ANALYTICAL APPROACH; OPTICAL-EMISSION SPECTROSCOPY; LI-ION BATTERIES; ELECTRON-PARAMAGNETIC-RESONANCE; ELEMENTAL IMPURITIES ANALYSIS

This ASU review focuses on developments in applications of atomic spectrometry to the characterisation of metals, chemicals and materials. It is difficult to identify research trends solely from an annual review of the literature, but a certain perspective can be obtained from examining the developments described in recent years in this ASU review series. It is, for example, evident that there has been a decline in truly novel applications for the analysis of chemicals, perhaps indicative of the fact that, for most sample types, there is now an abundance of methods available in the literature. Those papers that have appeared in the year under review have either focused on specific problems not yet fully addressed (e.g. determination of Si in gasoline) or on incremental development of well-established approaches to sample preparation or measurement. Nevertheless, there has been a very noticeable increase in activity in relation to publication of methods for the characterisation of pharmaceuticals. This is directly linked to changes in the US Pharmacopeia requirements for registration of pharmaceuticals for human use that require assessments to be made for trace element content. Laser-induced breakdown spectrometry is becoming widely employed for applications involving the characterisation of a wide variety of metals, materials and other solid sample types. Efforts are being made to overcome the perceived weaknesses of the technique, such as lack of sensitivity, elemental fractionation, accuracy and/or precision. Advances have been made, for example, using dual-pulse lasers to improve sensitivity, or by employing chemometrics methods with full spectrum data to improve the robustness of calibration. Many of these reported LIBS developments draw from, and have relevance for, applications involving LA-ICP-MS, which continues to be a popular means of generating highly sensitive lateral and depth profiling and bulk compositional information for a wide range of materials and solids. The use of field portable instrumentation for in situ analysis continues grow, with LIBS and XRF techniques amongst those most frequently cited. The development of such instrumentation has had a substantial impact in the examination of cultural heritage artefacts, especially in relation to paintings, wall murals and other objects of unique historical value. The latter area of application has also seen continued use of combinations of surface (SIMS, XPS, SEM-EDS, PIXE, GD and laserablation methods) and bulk (ICP-OES, ICP-MS, AAS, XRF) analysis techniques to reveal details of objects that would not otherwise be identified (for example preparatory sketches hidden under original works of art or materials provenance). This trend towards using a multi-technique based approach has also been apparent in the characterisation of multi-layer or heterogeneous organic and inorganic materials and metals. Finally, methods for the analysis of nanoparticles and nanostructures have been reported, based primarily on single particle (SP)-ICP-MS and flow field flow fractionation (A4F). The investigation of methods of drift correction, the use of flow injection and isotope dilution methodologies in combination with SP-ICP-MS are indicative of the further development of this field.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy; Instrument; Review;IN-SITU ANALYSIS; INDUCED PLASMA; QUANTITATIVE-ANALYSIS; MICROCHIP-LASER; SPECTROCHEMICAL ANALYSIS; GEOLOGICAL SAMPLES; RAMAN-SPECTROSCOPY; MATRIX CONVERSION; RAPID DETECTION; LIBS SYSTEM

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has become a very attractive technique in the field of chemical analysis. The technique utilizes a laser focused on a small spot to create a micro-plasma on the sample surface. In recent years, LIBS is a frontier analysis technique in spectrometric analysis, with the advantages such as real-time, online and non-contact analysis. The research and development of various instruments based on this technology has attracted great attention of analysts. In this article, we reviewed the research progress of LIBS instrument from aspects of the components and field equipment in recent years, including portable LIBS, handheld LIBS and remote LIBS.

Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS); Quantitative analysis; Matrix effect; Self-absorption;INDUCED PLASMA SPECTROSCOPY; ARTIFICIAL NEURAL-NETWORK; LEAST-SQUARES REGRESSION; ELEMENTAL ANALYSIS; MULTIVARIATE-ANALYSIS; EMISSION-SPECTROSCOPY; SPECTRAL-LINE; SOIL SAMPLES; IRON-ORE; CHEMCAM INSTRUMENT

This paper reviews methods to compensate for matrix effects and self-absorption during quantitative analysis of compositions of solids measured using LaserInduced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and their applications to in-situ analysis. Methods to reduce matrix and self-absorption effects on calibration curves are first introduced. The conditions where calibration curves are applicable to quantification of compositions of solid samples and their limitations are discussed. While calibration-free LIBS (CF-LIBS), which corrects matrix effects theoretically based on the Boltzmann distribution law and Saha equation, has been applied in a number of studies, requirements need to be satisfied for the calculation of chemical compositions to be valid. Also, peaks of all elements contained in the target need to be detected, which is a bottleneck for in-situ analysis of unknown materials. Multivariate analysis techniques are gaining momentum in LIBS analysis. Among the available techniques, principal component regression (PCR) analysis and partial least squares (PLS) regression analysis, which can extract related information to compositions from all spectral data, are widely established methods and have been applied to various fields including in-situ applications in air and for planetary explorations. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), where non-linear effects can be modelled, have also been investigated as a quantitative method and their applications are introduced. The ability to make quantitative estimates based on LIBS signals is seen as a key element for the technique to gain wider acceptance as an analytical method, especially in in-situ applications. In order to accelerate this process, it is recommended that the accuracy should be described using common figures of merit which express the overall normalised accuracy, such as the normalised root mean square errors (NRMSEs), when comparing the accuracy obtained from different setups and analytical methods. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy; Food analysis; Review; Sample preparation; Food fraud;INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY; SELF-ABSORPTION COEFFICIENTS; INDUCED PLASMA SPECTROSCOPY; ELEMENTAL ANALYSIS; EMISSION-LINES; LASER-ABLATION; SURFACE; MILK; CLASSIFICATION; ADULTERATION

Food is the main source of different elements which are essential, trace and fundamental for human diet and health. The type and level of elements in foods indicates whether it's toxic or not. Therefore, determination of elements and their amounts is crucial for food safety and quality. In order to fulfill the increasing demand on multi-elemental information for product monitoring, rapid and sensitive analytical techniques which are capable of detecting major and trace elements with good precision and accuracy are required. In this review, the most recent literature about the use of LIBS for the analysis of food and capabilities and limitations of LIBS on foods have been reported. This review provides comprehensive overview of the applications on food quality and fraud monitoring of several foods, sampling techniques and some limitations of LIBS. Furthermore, it provides a critical outlook on the developments to analyze food matrices with proper sample preparations. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DEPTH-PROFILE ANALYSIS; VACUUM-ULTRAVIOLET; SURFACE-ANALYSIS; STEEL ANALYSIS; DISCHARGE; SPECTROMETRY; ABLATION; SAMPLES; LIBS; QUANTIFICATION

This review is focused on a comparison of LIBS with the two most common plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) techniques for analysis of metals; spark OES and glow discharge (GD) OES. It is shown that these two techniques have only minor differences in analytical performance. An important part of the paper reviews a direct comparison of the analytical figures of merit for bulk analysis of steels using spark and LIBS sources. The comparison was carried out using one instrument with interchangeable sources, eliminating differences related to the optical system and detectors. It was found that the spark provides slightly better analytical figures of merit. The spark analysis is considerably faster, the simple design of the spark stand has enabled complete automation, both properties of great importance in the metallurgical industry for routine analysis. The analysis of non-metallic inclusions (NMI) with spark and LIBS is presented, in the case of the spark this has become known as Pulse Distribution Analysis (FDA). A very significant difference between the techniques is that the electrical spark typically evaporates similar to 100 times more material than a single laser pulse, resulting in complete evaporation of an NMI present in the evaporated metal. The major advantage of LIBS is that it is localised with very good lateral resolution. The major advantages of spark is that it is much faster (can be done simultaneous with the bulk analysis) and easier to quantify. Compositional Depth Profiling (CDP) is compared for GD-OES and LIBS. It is shown that for applications where GD-OES is well suited, e.g. coated metallic sheet, GD-OES still performs slightly better than LIBS. Similar to the case of NMI analysis, the major advantage of LIBS is the great lateral resolution. This allows elemental surface mapping, as well as CDP of very small areas on pm scale. One further advantage of LIBS is that samples of almost any material, shape and size can be analysed, whereas GD-OES has only limited capabilities for non-flat and small samples. A general conclusion of this review is that LIBS is not likely to replace spark and GD-OES in the foreseeable future, for applications where these techniques are well suited. On the other hand several new applications, particularly in the field of on-line monitoring of industrial processes, are making great inroads for LIBS in the metallurgical and manufacturing industries. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

LIBS; Mineral composition; Analytical technique; Food; Chemometrics;PLANT MATERIALS; WHEAT-FLOUR; CLASSIFICATION; ADULTERATION; SPECTROMETRY; IDENTIFICATION; CHEMOMETRICS; VALIDATION; EMISSION; STANDARD

Background: Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is an atomic emission spectroscopic technique which uses a focused pulsed laser beam to generate plasma from the material. The plasma contains atoms, ions and free electrons which emit electromagnetic radiation as the plasma cools down. The emitted light is resolved by a spectrometer to form a spectrum. Recently, LIBS has become an emerging analytical technique for characterisation and identification of materials; its multi-elemental analysis, fast response, remote sensing, little to no sample preparation, low running cost and ease of use make LIBS a promising technique for the food sector. Scope and approach: The present article reviews the feasibility of LIBS for food analysis. It presents recent progress and applications of LIBS as an efficient and reagent-free, at-line tool capable of replacing traditional time-consuming analytical methods for assessing the quality and composition of food products. An overview of LIBS fundamentals, instrumentation and statistical data analysis is also provided. Key findings and conclusions: Although LIBS technology shows many advantages, challenges remain in terms of sample preparation, matrix effects, spectral pre-processing, model calibration and instrument development. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY; INDUCTIVELY-COUPLED PLASMA; MOLECULAR ISOTOPIC SPECTROMETRY; FLIGHT MASS-SPECTROMETRY; LA-ICP-MS; DEPTH PROFILE; LIBS; SAMPLES; STEEL

Laser ablation has become a dominant technology for direct solid sampling in analytical chemistry. Laser ablation refers to the process in which an intense burst of energy delivered by a short laser pulse is used to sample (remove a portion of) a material. The advantages of laser-ablation chemical analysis include direct characterization of solids, no chemical procedures for dissolution, reduced risk of contamination or sample loss, analysis of very small samples not separable for solution analysis, and determination of spatial distributions of elemental composition. This short review describes the most common approaches-laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and laser-ablation inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS)-and provides an introduction to laser-ablation molecular isotopic spectrometry (LAMIS).

laser-induced; plasma emission; molecular spectra;INDUCED-BREAKDOWN-SPECTROSCOPY; LOCAL THERMAL-EQUILIBRIUM; GAS-PHASE REACTIONS; ELEMENTAL ANALYSIS; ISOTOPIC SPECTROMETRY; SELF-ABSORPTION; INDUCED FLUORESCENCE; TITANIUM MONOXIDE; ABLATION PLUMES; FEMTOSECOND

The aim of this paper is the description of the optical emission spectral features of the plasma produced by laser-matter interaction, from a fundamental point of view. The laser induced plasma emission spectra are discussed in connection with the basic mechanisms that take place in the plasma phase at different time delays from the laser pulse. The laser induced plasma being a dynamic system, the hierarchy of the elementary mechanisms changes continuously because the electron number density and the electron temperature decrease during the expansion. As a consequence of this, over the duration of the plasma's persistence the prevailing emitting species changes from ions to atoms and from atoms to molecules. Both atomic and molecular emission spectroscopy are discussed, to convey a complete description of the temporal evolution of laser induced plasma. Current literature, as well as the traditional plasma theories, are presented and discussed in order to give to the reader a general idea of the potentialities and drawbacks of emission spectroscopy in the study of laser induced plasma and its various applications.

PARTICLE-ICP-MS; RAMAN-SPECTROSCOPY; NANOPARTICLES; SILVER

Analytical spectroscopy is a mature field, but advances in instrumentation, measurement, and sample preparation techniques continue to be made. Much recent development has seen a heavy emphasis toward techniques and instrumentation that allow for noninvasive, in situ, and in vivo procedures while still retaining a high degree of sensitivity. This article will review some of this progress over the past two to three years across five major spectroscopic fields: Raman, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence, infrared, and inductively coupled plasma techniques.

Cadmium and hexavalent chromium; laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS); lead, quantitative analyses; plant materials;PLASMA-MASS-SPECTROMETRY; NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY; ARTIFICIAL NEURAL-NETWORK; GANNAN NAVEL ORANGE; POWDER SAMPLES; DOUBLE-PULSE; IN-SITU; MULTIVARIATE-ANALYSIS; ELEMENTAL ANALYSIS; ATOMIC-ABSORPTION

Bearing the merits of rapid, minimally destructive, and simultaneous multi-element analyses, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) shows its unique advantages in quantitative analyses of lead, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium in plant materials. However, the greatest challenge LIBS must confront is calibration. Various methods for calibration are proposed and put into effect; nevertheless, limits of detection acquired by LIBS are not acceptable when they are compared with the maximum residue limits drawn up by governments, and LIBS's performances in quantitative analyses are to be improved. This review summarizes recent studies of analyzing lead, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium in plant materials quantitatively by LIBS; weighs the strengths and weaknesses of their calibration methods; and recommends the combination of matrix-matched standards based on spiked sample materials and internal standard as well as chemometrics in complicated situations for calibration in LIBS. Selecting the emission line of the analyte, sample enrichment and signal enhancement are measures that this review puts forward to improve the performances of LIBS in calibration. These quantitative analyses of lead, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium in plant materials by LIBS provide an opportunity to be utilized in mapping distributions and remediation for soil and water, as well as supervision for agricultural products safety and pollution treatments.

explosives detection; optical-related technology; laser wavelength; collector; substrate;ENHANCED RAMAN-SPECTROSCOPY; INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY; REMOTE DETECTION; SINGLE-MOLECULE; SCATTERING SERS; MINE DETECTION; HAND-HELD; SURFACE; TNT; NANOSTRUCTURES

To prevent tragic disasters caused by terror acts and warfare threats, security check personnel must be capable of discovering, distinguishing and eliminating the explosives at multiple circumstances. Standoff technology for the remote detection of explosives and their traces on contaminated surfaces is a research field that has become a heightened priority in recent years for homeland security and counter-terrorism applications. There has been a huge increase in research within this area, the improvement of standoff trace explosives detection by optical-related technology. This paper provides a consolidation of information relating to recent advances in several key problems of, without being limited to one specific research area or explosive type. Working laserwavelength of detection system is discussed. Generation and collection of explosives spectra signal are summarized. Techniques for analysing explosives spectra signal are summed up.

Bioremediation; diversity; FTIR; microbes; NMR spectroscopy; Raman spectroscopy;TRANSFORM-INFRARED-SPECTROSCOPY; INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY; FLIGHT MASS-SPECTROMETRY; ATOMIC-FORCE MICROSCOPY; DESORPTION IONIZATION-TIME; SCANNING TUNNELING SPECTROSCOPY; RAY PHOTOELECTRON-SPECTROSCOPY; PROTEIN SECONDARY STRUCTURE; MICROBIOLOGICALLY INFLUENCED CORROSION; EXTRACELLULAR POLYMERIC SUBSTANCES

Microbes are the most fascinating group, with huge diversity devising myriad functional applications in the field of medicine, pharmaceuticals, environmental remediation, and industries. Quantitative and qualitative determination of biomolecules and microbial assisted phenomena by spectroscopy is a pioneer approach. It facilitates the study of atomic and molecular geometries, energy levels, chemical bonds, and interactions between molecules and microbes. It produces fingerprints of the microbial species serving to characterize, differentiate, and identify microorganisms, in both the environment and at single-cell level. Spectroscopy-based bioremediation techniques like Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy, force spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, photoemission spectroscopy, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy have been very well represented and linked with the microbial applications. This review summarizes the traditional spectroscopic techniques used for the study of microbes and microbial-assisted products as well as illustrates its application in the field of microbial diversity and remediation. This will provide an outlook for the intricate characterization and dimension of microbes to be used for effective application in bioremediation.

Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy; LIBS; Laser-Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma coupled with Mass Spectroscopy and Optical Emission Spectroscopy; LA-ICP-MS; LA-ICP-OES; ICP-OES; Raman spectroscopy; algae; algal biomass; biofuel; bioremediation;

Algal biomass that is represented mainly by commercially grown algal strains has recently found many potential applications in various fields of interest. Its utilization has been found advantageous in the fields of bioremediation, biofuel production and the food industry. This paper reviews recent developments in the analysis of algal biomass with the main focus on the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and partly Laser-Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma techniques. The advantages of the selected laser-based analytical techniques are revealed and their fields of use are discussed in detail.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy; LIBS; Mapping; Trace elements; Phytoremediation; Cancer; Plant; Bacteria; Animal tissues;

Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) is a sensitive optical technique capable of fast multi-elemental analysis of solid, gaseous and liquid samples. Since the late 1980s LIBS became visible in the analytical atomic spectroscopy scene; its applications having been developed continuously since then. In this paper, the use of LIBS for trace element determination in different matrices is reviewed. The main emphasis is on spatially resolved analysis of microbiological, plant and animal samples.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy; LIBS; imaging techniques; nanoparticles; fluorescence; magnetic resonance imaging;

The requirements for early diagnostics as well as effective treatment of insidious diseases such as cancer constantly increase the pressure on development of efficient and reliable methods for targeted drug/gene delivery as well as imaging of the treatment success/failure. One of the most recent approaches covering both the drug delivery as well as the imaging aspects is benefitting from the unique properties of nanomaterials. Therefore a new field called nanomedicine is attracting continuously growing attention. Nanoparticles, including fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots) and magnetic nanoparticles, have proven their excellent properties for in vivo imaging techniques in a number of modalities such as magnetic resonance and fluorescence imaging, respectively. In this article, we review the main properties and applications of nanoparticles in various in vitro imaging techniques, including microscopy and/or laser breakdown spectroscopy and in vivo methods such as magnetic resonance imaging and/or fluorescence-based imaging. Moreover the advantages of the drug delivery performed by nanocarriers such as iron oxides, gold, biodegradable polymers, dendrimers, lipid based carriers such as liposomes or micelles are also highlighted.