University of Adelaide research may help in the fight against terrorism with the creation of a sensor that can detect tiny quantities of explosives with the use of light and special glass fibres. Published in the journal Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, the researchers describe a novel optical fibre sensor which can detect explosives in concentrations as low as 6.3 ppm (parts per million). It requires an analysis time of only a few minutes. “Traditionally explosives detection has involved looking for metals that encase them such as in land mines,” says project leaderDr Georgios Tsiminis, from the University’s Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing. “In today’s world, however, homemade improvised explosive devices will often have no metal in them so we need to be able to detect the explosive material itself. This can be difficult as they often don’t interact with chemicals and we don’t want them near electricity in case they explode.” Instead, the researchers are using a plastic material which emits red light when illuminated with green laser light – and the amount of red light it emits is reduced by the presence of explosives. Three minute holes at the core of specially manufactured optical fibres are coated with the
The post Detecting trace amounts of explosives with light has been published on Technology Org.
#materials
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'
No comments:
Post a Comment