Porous Silicon Sensor Detects Chemical Warfare Agents

Abstract

A sensor developed by chemists at the University of California, San Diego, selectively detects compounds with a phosphorus-fluorine bond like that found in nerve agents such as sarin, soman, and GF. new sensor is more selective for G-type nerve agents than competing technologies, such as surface acoustic wave devices. Chemistry professors Michael J. Sailor and William C. Trogler, along with postdoctoral associates Honglae Sohn and Sonia Letant, constructed the sensor from a porous silicon interferometer [ J. Am. Chem. Soc. , 122 , 5399 (2000)]. Sailor envisions these silicon-based sensors as small and inexpensive devices that can be used by handfuls or bucketfuls to track nerve agent plumes. The key thing is not only to detect when there's something there but to be able to track it, he tells C&EN. To track something like a plume, you need to have an array of distributed sensors. You'd like to have something that's maybe the size of a ...