Taming Matrix Effects: Data-Driven Strategies for More Accurate Elemental Analysis

Alexander Scheeline, a distinguished analytical chemist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry, School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, delivered a talk titled “Sparks, Pinches, and People: A Retrospective on Transient Discharges Before LIBeration” at the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry in Tucson, Arizona, this year (1).

Our subsequent interview with Scheeline delved into this topic further. Scheeline highlighted in previous interview clips about the state of spark-induced breakdown spectroscopy (SIBS) and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) (2,3). In this interview clip, we turn the focus to the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in spectroscopy, and Scheeline discusses how AI and ML will enhance SIBS and LIBS calibration.

Spectroscopy: As machine learning and chemometrics become more common in spectroscopic workflows, what role do you see data-driven modeling playing in enhancing SIBS (or LIBS) calibration, quantification accuracy, and multi-element analysis?

Alex Scheeline: This is a sticky one. I actually talked this about in my lecture. There are two schools of thought. The first one is, if you need sophisticated chemometrics, why don't you redesolve and redesign the experiment so that the data are nice and clean and you don't need a whole lot of chemometrics? The other school of thought is that if we can use AI and mine out additional details from measurements, isn't that a better use of experimental data? I think that those two schools are going to continue to be in contention for a while. Where I think that AI could be of extreme help is helping people mine the old literature so that they don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's not obvious to me that there's as much effort in that area as I personally would like to see.

This video clip is the third part of our conversation with Scheeline. To stay up to date on our coverage of the Winter Conference, click here.

References

1. IASA, Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry. IASA. Available at: https://iasa.world/winter-plasma-conference (accessed 2026-01-20).
2. Wetzel, W. An Inside Look at SIBS and Transient Discharges. Spectroscopy. Available at: https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/an-inside-look-at-sibs-and-transient-discharges (accessed 2026-01-21).
3. Wetzel, W. What are the Current Trends in SIBS and LIBS? Spectroscopy. Available at: https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/what-are-the-current-trends-in-sibs-and-libs- (accessed 2026-01-22).