Standard explosive detection technologies for checked baggage heavily rely on an x-ray imaging system that detects bulk materials based on their atomic number and density. Although this approach works well for identifying commercial and military explosives, improvised explosives are more difficult to detect due to high variations in their chemical composition and purity. Adjusting the detector parameters to capture all explosives can result in a high rate of false positives, requiring secondary screening. This can lead to reduced screening throughput, passenger delays, and increased labor costs. The proposed work will engineer a low-cost sensor array utilizing extremely sensitive 3D graphene-based materials, which will be able to detect and discriminate between different explosives based upon their chemical vapor fingerprints. LytEn has developed a novel 3D graphene-based sensor array technology that can detect various volatile organic compounds (VOCs) across different chemical classes below their permissible exposure limit. The technology is rapid, inexpensive, and capable of distinguishing different VOCs. The sensor will detect threat agents within an acceptable time, be selective enough to ignore multiple interference in complex backgrounds, easy to operate and interpret, and cheap and simple to produce. In Phase I, we propose to refine this sensor technology and develop a small portable device for the detection and identification of TATP and other security threat agents.
