SBIR Phase I: Multi-target, Multi-spectral Explosives Detector

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I research project seeks to develop a new technique for enhancing fluorescence-based detection of explosives in order to help counter the threat posed by improvised explosive devices (IED). The proposed approach will develop a highly enhanced multi-spectral band fluorescence reader and a tape-based sensing surface supply system that is generally applicable to any fluorescence-based transducer. The proposed Surface Plasmon-Coupled Emission (SPCE) can enhance fluorescence-based detection sensitivity without sacrificing utility at the cost of higher positive alarm rates. The proposed innovation imparts greater probability of detection and, at the same time, maintains or even reduces the false alarm rate. This is accomplished through significant increases in the amount of signal collected from the fluorescent transducer with the simultaneous extraction of fluorescence spectral feature information. The envisioned optical reader head takes advantage of unique plasmon-resonance effects that focus fluorescence signals in one dimension while at the same time imparting an angular dispersion of the fluorescence spectrum such that the angles of emitted light must simultaneously satisfy the boundary conditions constraints of the surface plasmon. While the initial application will be to support the fight against IEDs, the technology is generally applicable to any optically enabled detection scheme and is, thus, applicable to numerous types of analytes other than explosives. Additionally, the SPCE technique lends itself to more diverse deployment strategies than most sensitive chemical detection instruments. These include a simple array-based sensing format with multiple reporters and an automatic sensor renewal process for autonomous operation.