Matrix sensors for hazardous gas monitoring

"The Army's statutory mandate to assess survivability in new or modified combat platforms requires rapidly and accurately recording simultaneous concentrations of some seventeen combustion or pyrolysis-related chemical compounds inside the platform's crewcompartment. Because data must be collected during live exercises while the platform both delivers and receives fire, the instrument making the measurements must be tough, compact, and able to store concentration histories for post-test recovery andreadout. In Phase I, Implant Sciences outlined a program to produce an instrument meeting these requirements and, in the course of executing it, proved the detection principal on which the instrument is based and demonstrated the miniaturizationtechnology necessary to compress multi-gas measurements into a pocket-sized package. Phase II proposes to build on this work and bridge from it to a prototype matrix-sensor package suitable for evaluation as a survivability assessment tool. To assistwith practical aspects of packaging sensors into detector ensembles and to expedite the effort by employing, to the greatest extent possible, modified versions of commercial instrument packages, the Company is joined in Phase II by Detcon Inc., anestablished supplier of toxic-gas-detecting instruments. A near commercial-quality instrument is the expected outcome of this collaboration."