Open AccessBroadband tunable external cavity quantum cascade lasers for standoff detection of explosives
Author(s) -
Stefan Hugger,
F. Fuchs,
J. Jarvis,
Michel Kinzer,
Quankui Yang,
W. Bronner,
R. Driad,
R. Aidam,
Kai Degreif,
Frank Schnürer
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
proceedings of spie, the international society for optical engineering/proceedings of spie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.192
H-Index - 176
eISSN - 1996-756X
pISSN - 0277-786X
DOI - 10.1117/12.918398
Subject(s) - pentaerythritol tetranitrate , quantum cascade laser , explosive material , laser , materials science , optoelectronics , trinitrotoluene , optics , explosive detection , cascade , spectroscopy , infrared , absorption (acoustics) , physics , chemistry , organic chemistry , chromatography , quantum mechanics
We demonstrate contactless detection of solid residues of explosives using mid-infrared laser spectroscopy. Our detection scheme relies on active laser illumination, synchronized with the collection of the backscattered radiation by an infrared camera. The key component of the system is an external cavity quantum cascade laser with a tuning range of 300 cm(-1) centered at 1220 cm(-1). Residues of TNT (trinitrotoluene), PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) and RDX (cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine) could be identified and discriminated against non-hazardous materials by scanning the illumination wavelength over several of the characteristic absorption features of the explosives
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