Development of a Personal Aerosol Collector and Spectrometer (PACS) for Detecting Airborne Nanomaterials in an Operational Environment

The Air Force as per its SBIR topic AF131-024 is seeking a device that can monitor personal exposure to engineered nanomaterial in real-time. The prevalence of these nanomaterials has been on the rise in recent years and they represent a new inhalation risk, especially in warzone environments. Despite this risk, there are very few solutions that can address the need for real-time, size-resolved measurements of particle concentrations by number, mass, and surface area. One device that does exist and meets this requirement is Spectral Energies’ (SE’s) PACS device, which has been developed under SBIR funding. During the previous Phase-II SBIR, SE’s device was demonstrated to accurately capture size-resolved particle concentrations in near real-time and it has better size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) performance than other commercially available devices. During the proposed work, SE will modify its device such that the weight will be under 16 lbs, the size of the device will be similar to that of a small toaster (550 in3), and the cost will be on the order of $25k-$50k. This is about a 50% reduction in weight and size.