Homeland Security

Development of pulse-shaping technology for detection of chemical warfare agents. This project has been funded by ARO STTR program. We are currently in the Phase II stage. The detection of chemicals depends on molecular recognition at very low concentrations in most cases very complex chemical environment. This demanding task requires extremely sensitive methods and a carefully designed strategy to avoid false positive/false negative alarms. The method being developed by BSI is based on the ability of shaped ultrashort laser pulses to cause predictable patterns of molecular fragmentation that depend on its structure and spectral phase of incident ultrashort laser light. The fragments are detected by mass spectrometry and the patterns are analyzed to determine if a chemical or biological warfare agent is present in the environment.