Adapted from Phase II: An urgent national defense need is the ability to detect WMD chemical and biological agents and improvised explosive devices (IED) at a distance with high sensitivity and specificity. The goal of this DARPA Phase II STTR project is the development of a prototype hand-held telescopic Raman spectroscopy system capable of sensitive, high-specificty, stand-off identification of chemical including IED explosives and biological materials at distances of up to one kilometer, dependent upon "seeing" conditions. Among the issues addressed by this development are signal interferences from sunlight, fluorescence and other out-of-phase sources of noise. Eye safety issues are also addressed. This development will lead to a number of commercialization opportunities, especially in multiplexed bio-assay and hazmat chemical identification at long distances.
Keywords: Raman, stand-off, mems, imaging, telescope, free-space, ied, rfi, sers, biological
