Magnetic Resonance Detection of Explosives and Illicit Materials

Abstract

This special issue of Applied Magnetic Resonance is devoted to magnetic resonance detection of explosives and illicit materials. This special issue presents papers on a very specific and important area of nuclear quadrupole and magnetic resonance (NQR and NMR) applications for detection of various solid-state and liquid explosive materials, illicit substances and medicine counterfeiting. The detection of explosives is an issue of extremely importance for modern civilization. There are remains of explosives after the wars and local conflicts as well as the explosives which are used by terrorists around the world. In the aviation and public security, there is a problem of non-invasive detection of the explosives in the baggage, suits, cars, and others. In spite of the availability of various detectors, there are a number of problems to be resolved, such as increasing the sensitivity, shortening the detection time, decreasing the scanner cost, etc. In addition, an enormous number of various explosive materials are known that imposes a requirement for an effective technique to detect a vast range of possible threats. A bomb or a mine has plastic or metal enclose (usually hermetically sealing the content) and may also contain extra materials in addition to the explosive itself that makes a number of detection techniques not possible to use. Available detection techniques can be divided on the two large group of bulk and trace explosive detection methods. Although some trace detection techniques have proven their high effectiveness (such as dogs, ion mobility/mass/Raman/terahertz spectrometry, etc.), their application is unlikely to resolve an issue of the reliable explosive