How clean is clean? S and T challenges and perspectives on surface contamination detection and decontamination verification

Le résumé fourni par la source

After an attack in which chemical or biological weapons are employed, thorough equipment decontamination is critical to ensure that materiel (tanks, trucks, planes, etc.) can be quickly returned to service without the residual risk of agent exposure to the Warfighter and environment. To verify that a decontamination process has been successful, it’s necessary to be able to detect chemical and biological threats on surfaces down to, and below, hazardous concentration levels. At a scientific level, decontamination verification is a particularly challenging problem set due to the need to be able to quickly detect analytes at trace concentrations in various states of matter against a variety of complex surfaces, including porous materials. The ideal sensor for decontamination verification would be one that: can quickly scan large areas to detect and identify areas of contamination with a high dynamic range, ranging from gross contamination to trace quantities; detects chemicals on a variety of complex surfaces, including porous materials; does not contact the surface being interrogated or introduce chemical contamination into the sensor; detects threats in various states of presentation, including particles, thin films, and droplets; and detects residual contamination in the presence of decontamination solutions. This paper describes the technical complexities associated with trace detection of chemicals on surfaces and outlines some of the trade space considerations to inform further sensor development to support decontamination verification.

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