SBIR Phase II: Novel Field Drug Test System for Law Enforcement

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to develop technology that will improve law enforcement (LE) effectiveness in combatting the U.S. illegal drug epidemic, which contributed to over 67,000 drug overdose deaths in 2018. An affordable, effective field drug test system, superior to conventional color test kits and Raman-based test systems, would address this challenge, particularly because the widely used color test kits are outdated, hazardous, and susceptible to a high false positive rate. This novel drug test system will improve the accuracy, reliability, ease of use, safety, and affordability of field drug identification and permit data analysis that will help LE reduce the supply of dangerous drugs from the communities they serve. This innovation has the potential to expand into other markets, including medical diagnostics and environmental analysis. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will implement a novel system for on-site presumptive drug testing and collection of drug intelligence for LE. Conventional color tests are inaccurate and highly flawed, often resulting in failure to accurately detect common drugs and novel drug analogues as they are introduced into the illegal substance market. Commercially available handheld devices that utilize Raman spectroscopy are superior to color test but are too expensive for local and state LE agencies to widely adopt. The research objectives involve further developing a system that leverages photoluminescence spectroscopy in a low-cost handheld spectrometer, a sampling device that uses a drug-indicating chemosensor, and software that consists of a mobile app and cloud-based technology to help identify illegal substances and specific drug signatures. The anticipated technical results will be the optimization of the handheld spectrometer design and drug-sampling device, identification of new photoluminescent chemosensors for controlled substances, and software to enhance the accuracy of the sample data analysis. This system will establish tools for forensic analysis of drug signatures and regional trends in illegal drug trafficking. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.