Stand-off techniques have received increasing attention as valuable methods for material analysis at remote distances. This is particularly relevant when looking at hazardous contaminants in the environment or residual explosive material, where it is desirable for the analyst to remain at a safe distance from the material being investigated.
By Andor
Stand-off
techniques have received increasing attention as valuable methods for material
analysis at remote distances. This is particularly relevant when looking at
hazardous contaminants in the environment or residual explosive material, where
it is desirable for the analyst to remain at a safe distance from the material
being investigated.
Work carried out
by Prof JJ Laserna’s group at the Dept of Analytical Chemistry in the
University of Malaga, reported by González et.al, explores the use of
stand-off LASER Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (stand-off LIBS) for the
detection of explosive residues in situations simulating ‘real environment’
scenarios. They looked at the feasibility of detecting the likes of improvised
explosive materials (IEM) through windows such as those in cars or buildings or
within various types of container. A telescopic system was used to focus a high
power pulsed laser to a spot on the material to produce a micro-plasma. The
same telescope collected the light emission from this plasma which was then
analyzed in a spectrograph using the advanced time-gating of an intensified CCD
camera.
Figure 1:
The ability to
detect dangerous contaminants, improvised explosives (IED), home made explosives
(HME), or nuclear by-products, has become of increasing importance due to
heightened risks in recent decades. In their work, Gonzalez and co-workers set
out to test the feasibility of making such measurements with their TELELIBS
sensor, and to assess the influences that the barrier position and its
composition might have on the quality of those measurements. In allied work the
group looked at the influence of atmospheric turbulence on beam propagation to
and from the target, where they showed that measurements over several tens
of meters could be significantly affected by atmospheric turbulence.
A schematic of
the typical experimental set up used by the Malaga group is shown in figure 1.
It consists of a telescope which takes the light from a laser and focuses it on
to a target at a distance of typically 30 m. Two Nd:YAG lasers were used at the
fundamental wavelength of 1064 nm, delivering 5 ns long pulses at 10 Hz, and
energy of 800 mJ. The two laser outputs were arranged to be overlapped in space
and time so that the overall irradiance on target was doubled.
Figure 2: Main
components of table-top LIBS setup at LIBSlab, Brno University of Technology / Source: Andor
The emission
light from the micro-plasma was collected by the same telescope and delivered
into a 600 µm core diameter fibre via a dichroic mirror. The excitation source
was reflected by the dichroic mirror into the telescope whilst the returning
atomic emission light was transmitted through the mirror, where it was then
coupled into the optical fibre for delivery to the spectrograph. A
Czerny-Turner spectrograph (Shamrock 303i) with an intensified CCD camera
(iStar DH740-25F-03) was used to detect the emission. In any LIBS experiment
one of the main challenges in attempting to collect discernible atomic emission
line spectra is to reject the broad band continuum which occurs during the
incidence of the laser pulse and immediately afterwards as the plasma plume
evolves. This broad continuum tends to dominate the emission early in time
resulting in little or no atomic line data being evident. However, an ICCD
allows the acquisition by the camera to be delayed for a time in order to
reject this early continuum. In this work a delay of 400 ns was used along with
an exposure or integration time of 9 µs.
Among the
substances investigated were sodium chlorate (NaClO3), dinitrotoluene (DNT),
trinitrotoluene (TNT), and some plastic explosives (C2 and H15). A number of
barrier materials, including clear glass, some tinted glasses, and colorless
PMMA (a polymer material) were placed in the beam path. The team investigated
the influence of the target-to-barrier distance on the measured signal to
background (S/N) ratios, along with the influence of the optical
characteristics of the barrier material, thus accounting for the transmittance
of excitation laser light and the returning plasma emission. A suite of
chemometric tools were used to analyze the spectral data for the presence or
absence of explosive residues.
Figure 3:
Schematic picture of combined LIBS-Raman system used by the Laserna group.
A – laser, B - focusing optics, C – telescope, D - power supplies, E – delay generators, F - spectrographs, G – fibres, H – notch filter, I – laptop.
A number of
spectral bands and atomic/ionic emission lines were chosen for fingerprinting
and subsequent identification of the explosive substances: examples of such features
included the CN band (388.3 nm), the C2 band (471.5 nm, 516.5 nm and 563.5 nm),
and the Al (I) line (469.4 nm) among others. The ability to detect a residue
was determined by the ‘sensitivity’ and ‘specificity’ of the measuring system.
Sensitivity is related to the system’s ability to identify the presence of an
explosive material if it is present i.e. the system flags up the presence of
the material when it should. Specificity is related to its ability to identify
explosives only if they are present i.e. the system doesn’t flag up the
presence of explosive when it shouldn’t. González and co-workers assessed the
capability of their system by measuring the sensitivity for the different
residues with the different barrier materials. By increasing the number of
laser shots it was possible to increase the detection to 100% sensitivity
without impacting on specificity.
Gonzalez and
co-workers successfully demonstrated the feasibility of using the stand-off or
TELELIBS technique for detection of explosive materials through different types
of window or interposed barriers, as long as there was a clear line of sight
from the sensor system to the target. They also demonstrated that relatively
few laser shots were required to ensure a high level of detection capability
and means of distinguishing different residues and that the position of the
barrier relative to the target and sensor was unimportant to the analysis. A
key enabler for this type of work is the high sensitivity and gating
versatility offered by the iStar ICCD camera. Research and validation on
stand-off analysis techniques has gained much momentum as demands grow for
safe, convenient and quick ways of testing for improvised explosives devices
and other hazardous contaminants in the environment.
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