Explosive luggage

Fast, highly reliable detection of residues that could indicate the presence of explosives and other hazardous materials inside luggage is now possible with technology under development at

Purdue University.

A research team led by R. Graham Cooks has found a way to determine the presence on a surface of trace quantities of chemicals – such as those found in biological and chemical warfare agents, as well as several common explosives – within a few seconds.

The researchers’ method uses a mass spectrometer that has been modified to analyse samples directly from the environment rather than requiring the lengthy pre-treatment that laboratory mass spectrometry samples typically require.

According to Cooks, no portable device is currently on the market that can analyse samples in this manner. The team had previously developed a prototype device that detects nanogram-sized samples, but with recent improvements the device has proven successful at detecting at the picogram (trillionths of a gram) level in lab tests, about 1,000 times less material than previously required.