Sensitive detection of plastic explosives with self-assembled monolayer-coated microcantilevers

We report the detection of 10–30 parts-per-trillion levels of pentaerythritol tetranitrate and hexahydro-1,3,5-triazine within 20 s of exposure to a silicon microcantilever with its gold surface modified with a self-assembled monolayer of 4-mercaptobenzoic acid. These measurements correspond to a limit of detection of a few fg.

[1]  D. Rounbehler,et al.  Vapor pressure of explosives , 1986 .

[2]  A Fainberg,et al.  Explosives Detection for Aviation Security , 1992, Science.

[3]  Thomas Thundat,et al.  Thermal and ambient-induced deflections of scanning force microscope cantilevers , 1994 .

[4]  S. Creager,et al.  Conformational Rigidity in a Self-Assembled Monolayer of 4-Mercaptobenzoic Acid on Gold , 1995 .

[5]  H. Fuchs,et al.  STM Investigations of Thiol Self‐Assembled Monolayers , 1998 .

[6]  J. Steinfeld,et al.  Explosives detection: a challenge for physical chemistry. , 1998, Annual review of physical chemistry.

[7]  O'sullivan,et al.  Human cytomegalovirus detection by a quartz crystal microbalance immunosensor. , 2000, Enzyme and microbial technology.

[8]  R Chung,et al.  Rational materials design of sorbent coatings for explosives: applications with chemical sensors. , 2001, Talanta.

[9]  H. Ju,et al.  Effect of chain length on the surface properties of ω-carboxy alkanethiol self-assembled monolayers , 2001 .

[10]  R. Sleeman,et al.  A rapid and efficient mass spectrometric method for the analysis of explosives. , 2002, Rapid communications in mass spectrometry : RCM.

[11]  Raphael Lavi,et al.  Application of a unique scheme for remote detection of explosives , 2002 .

[12]  T. Khayamian,et al.  Analysis of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, pentaerythritol tetranitrate and cyclo-1,3,5-trimethylene-2,4,6-trinitramine using negative corona discharge ion mobility spectrometry. , 2003, Talanta.