Abstract
The Ceylon cinnamon is known for its unique aroma and medicinal benefits, and it has been used in indigenous medicines for thousands of years. The elements present in cinnamon can be nutritional as well pharmacologically mediate therapeutic properties to cure diseases. In this study, the elemental composition of cinnamon was evaluated using two advanced elemental analysis techniques: laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results of both the studies mutually substantiated the predominant level of some vital nutrients like potassium and calcium, besides other elements. Initially the LIBS system was experimentally optimized, specifically for the elemental analysis of cinnamon, and also the key plasma parameters like plasma temperature, and electron number density were measured to confirm the establishment of local thermodynamic equilibrium in laser induced plasma in cinnamon. Our LIBS system detected the presence of many vital nutrients like Na, K, Fe, Cd, Mg, Mn, Ni, Ba, Si, F, P, Ca, O, K, and S in cinnamon. In addition of LIBS, the XPS elemental study revealed the presence of Ca, O, K, and S, which further reiterated the predominance of these elements in cinnamon samples. The comparative analysis of these two techniques indicates that apparently LIBS is far more sensitive than XPS to detect trace level of many elements. Among the nutritional elements, the presence of potassium in cinnamon explains its medicinal use for hypertension under diuretic treatment. The results presented in this paper may be instrumental for the development of various cinnamon based herbal medications.