Inexpensive, Portable Sensors for Chemical-Biological Agent Detection

In modern battlespace, deployment of chemical and biological agents by our adversaries is a threat that needs to be addressed. These agents are cheap to manufacture and easily available. Their effects can be devastating to our troops. Detecting chemical and biological agents often require bulky equipment in a laboratory. Identifying the agents could take many minutes in such facilities. A more effective approach is to design and develop a low-cost portable sensor for detection of probable chemical and biological agents that our adversaries could deploy. Latel Corporation proposes to develop sensors for detecting chemical-biological agents by application of several promising and novel technologies: (1) Ion Mobility Spectrometry; (2) Fluorescence Analysis; (3) Vibrational Spectroscopy; and (4) Nanotechnology. Each of these technologies has some unique features and capabilities for chemical-biological agent detection. A combination of 2 or more of these technologies into one portable sensor would be a breakthrough in chemical sensing methodology.