SBIR-STTR Award

The need for powerful personal monitoring equipment to alert military personnel to impending chemical threats is clear. The development of sophisticated monitoring equipment which may be carried on a belt or in a pocket has largely been restricted to chemical sensors which tend to lack sufficcient specificity to offer adequate protection while minimizing false alarms. The present proposal is to investigate the feasibility of a personal detection device using a combination of Automated Vapor Sampling technology, gas chromatography and ion mobility spectrometry using a novel, recently introduced personal IMS device. The merit of this approach is the ability to offer specific detection information for a large set (20-100) of potential threat agents as well as background itnerferants. High speed GC/IMS, as potential threat agents as developed by FemtoScan Corp in collaboration with the University of Utah and Graseby Ionics Ltd., currently offers the only combined chromatography/spectroscopy approach capable of hand portable operation and the extension of this technoloy to a personal detection device would offer unparalled detection technology potentially capable of detecting and identifying ug/m3 amounts of threat agents in complex bakcgrounds with a real-time response.

Keywords:
capillary gas chromatography ion mobility spectrometry cw agent detection cw agent precursors

The need for powerful personal monitoring equipment to alert military personnel to impending chemical threats is clear. The development of sophisticated monitoring equipment which may be carried on a belt or in a pocket has largely been restricted to chemical sensors which tend to lack sufficient specificity to offer adequate protection while minimizing false alarms. The present proposal is to extend promising Phase I SBIR results to produce a personal GC/IMS device for CW detection applications. High speed GC/IMS, as developed by FemtoScan Corporation in collaboration with the University of Utah and Graseby Ionics, Ltd., currently offers the only combined chromatography/spectrometry approach capable of hand portable operation, and the extension of this technology to a personal detection device would offer unparalleled detection capability. This program proposes the construction of two personal GC/IMS prototypes which will be capable of detecting and identifying micron/m3 amounts of threat agents in complex backgrounds with a near real-time response. To obtain sufficient portability a considerable portion of the program is directed toward further development of low power, on-demand sampling and pumping strategies as well as an improved GC to IMS source interface. Finally, a portion of the program will be directed toward application development and performance testing of the prototype devices.