Sandia National Laboratories has been developing handheld chemical vapor detection systems for a number of years. These systems have been used to detect chemical warfare agents, toxic industrial chemicals, and more recently the presence of bacteria such as E. coli, B. Anthracis, and volatile signatures of tuberculosis (TB)..  To achieve high specificity and low false alarm rates for field sensing, these MEMS-based analyzers utilize selective preconcentration, gas chromatography (GC) and detection stages.  This talk will give an overview of handheld chemical detection technology and describe our recent research in developing microfabricated Nitrogen-Phosphorus Detectors (NPD) and miniature Pulse Discharge Ionization Detectors (PDID). The NPD is a selective GC detector that is highly responsive to analytes containing nitrogen or phosphorus atoms. We have been able to achieve phosphorus versus carbon selectivity of 106 in some cases. The PDID is a universal ionization-based detector with an ionization potential above 15 eV and therefore can detect any chemical but neon.  This universality has allowed us to demonstrate GC analyses on the headspace of growing E. coli and B. Anthracis bacteria.

Development of field portable microfabricated nitrogen-phosphorus and miniature pulse discharge ionization detectors for the detection of chemical and biological species

246th National Meeting (2013)

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