Researchers from the PCMI team have just published in the journal Sensors and Actuators B the culmination of four years of research funded by the ANR (French National Agency for Research and Innovation) as part of the “Specific Support for Defense Research” (ASTRID) program.
The Defense Innovation Agency, which supported this project, was looking for an ideal sensor capable of detecting, at trace levels and in real time, target molecules used to mark explosives. Despite decades of intensive research by various scientific groups, such a sensor did not exist, and trained dogs remained the preferred method in this field.
Researchers from the ULCO LPCA, in collaboration with the PhLAM laboratory at the University of Lille and the pyrotechnics center of the Franco-German Saint-Louis Institute, have designed an ultra-sensitive millimeter-wave device to isolate the spectroscopic signatures of nitroaromatic compounds used in marking TNT.
The instrument was tested in a real-life situation in a regulated area in Saint-Louis and the results met expectations, as it was possible to measure trace amounts and discriminate the signatures of different “nitro” markers trapped in real explosive matrices. The results offer real prospects for security/defense applications in the metrology of energetic vapors.
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