Compact, rapid, and rugged detector of military and improvised explosives based on external grating cavity quantum cascade lasers

Alexei Tsekoun; Ilya Dunayevskiy; Richard Maulini; Rodolfo Barron-Jimenez; Arkadiy Lyakh; C. Kumar N. Patel

doi:10.1117/12.826623

28 August 2009 Compact, rapid, and rugged detector of military and improvised explosives based on external grating cavity quantum cascade lasers

Alexei Tsekoun, Ilya Dunayevskiy, Richard Maulini, Rodolfo Barron-Jimenez, Arkadiy Lyakh, C. Kumar N. Patel

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7434, Optical Technologies for Arming, Safing, Fuzing, and Firing V; 74340J (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.826623
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2009, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Early detection of explosive substances is the first and most difficult step in defeating explosive devices. Many currently available methods suffer from fundamental failure modes limiting their realworld suitability. Infrared spectroscopy is ideal for reliable identification of explosives since it probes the chemical composition of molecules. Quantum cascade lasers rapidly became the light source of choice of IR spectroscopy due to their wavelength agility, relatively high output power, and small size and weight. Our compact, rapid, and rugged multi-explosives sensor based on external grating cavity QCLs simultaneously detects TNT, TATP, and acetone while being immune to ammonium nitrate interference. The instrument features low false alarm rate, and low probability of false negatives. Receiver operation characteristics curves are presented.

Citation Download Citation

Alexei Tsekoun, Ilya Dunayevskiy, Richard Maulini, Rodolfo Barron-Jimenez, Arkadiy Lyakh, and C. Kumar N. Patel "Compact, rapid, and rugged detector of military and improvised explosives based on external grating cavity quantum cascade lasers", Proc. SPIE 7434, Optical Technologies for Arming, Safing, Fuzing, and Firing V, 74340J (28 August 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.826623

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