UC Berkeley Engineers Develop Plasmon Laser Sensors To Replace Sniffer Dogs
For years the crime investigation departments across the world and the police have been using the sniffer dogs to detect bombs/explosives and what-not. The sniffer dogs' training is an expensive venture and the dogs could become tired. So now, much to the dog's rescue, a team of engineers from UC Berkeley is working on increasing the sensitivity of a light-based plasmon sensor so that they could be used to completely replace the sniffer dogs in the near future. The engineering team led by Xiang Zhang, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering, tested the improved sensor with various kinds of explosives. Their results showed that the sensor could successfully detect the airborne chemicals at really minute concentrations.
What is now being called a major development in the plasmosensor tech, the new kind of sniffer sensors are better than the current bomb-screening methods our men employ. Even at the airports, swabs are used to check for explosive residue, but those require physical contact and have relatively low-sensitivity. The newly developed technology by the UC Berkeley engineers can enable a hand-held device detect the tiniest traces of vapors of explosives in the air with great accuracy. Other than bomb detection, this sensor can also be used to discover the unexploded land mines.
The engineers working on this project took advantage of the chemical content in the explosives such as DNT and TNT. The nitro-compounds present in these not only make the chemicals more explosive, but they are also electron deficient - which increases the interaction of the molecules with natural surface and defects on the semiconductor. The new sensor device thus detects the increased intensity in the light signal that occurs as a result of this interaction and is able to find the whiff coming from the explosives.
The new device is an upgradation upon the earlier work in plasmon lasers by Zhang’s lab that compensated for this light leakage by using reflectors to bounce the surface plasmons back and forth inside the sensor and using the optical gain from the semiconductor to amplify the light energy.
What are your thoughts on the newly developed Plasmon Laser Sensors that could one day replace the sniffer dogs? Share with us in comments below.
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What is now being called a major development in the plasmosensor tech, the new kind of sniffer sensors are better than the current bomb-screening methods our men employ. Even at the airports, swabs are used to check for explosive residue, but those require physical contact and have relatively low-sensitivity. The newly developed technology by the UC Berkeley engineers can enable a hand-held device detect the tiniest traces of vapors of explosives in the air with great accuracy. Other than bomb detection, this sensor can also be used to discover the unexploded land mines.
The engineers working on this project took advantage of the chemical content in the explosives such as DNT and TNT. The nitro-compounds present in these not only make the chemicals more explosive, but they are also electron deficient - which increases the interaction of the molecules with natural surface and defects on the semiconductor. The new sensor device thus detects the increased intensity in the light signal that occurs as a result of this interaction and is able to find the whiff coming from the explosives.
The new device is an upgradation upon the earlier work in plasmon lasers by Zhang’s lab that compensated for this light leakage by using reflectors to bounce the surface plasmons back and forth inside the sensor and using the optical gain from the semiconductor to amplify the light energy.
What are your thoughts on the newly developed Plasmon Laser Sensors that could one day replace the sniffer dogs? Share with us in comments below.
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
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