Sensitive on-site threat detection towards Defence security

ThreatSens will create electrochemical fingerprints (EFs) of different classes of explosive materials (e.g. nitroalkanes, nitroaromatics, nitroamines, nitrate esters, acid salts and peroxides) using in-house manufactured screen printed electrodes (SPEs) employing sensitive square wave voltammetry (SWV) technique and portable potentiostats where advanced data analysis will be done by an algorithm in the form of a software application. Moreover, electrode modifications with cutting edge layered nanomaterials such as graphdyne and MXene will be performed to enhance the selectivity and sensitivity towards explosives and to achieve low detection limits. The applied electrochemical sensing approach, through its high sensitivity and selectivity, will overcome the issues related to the existing on-site tests, as it would reveal the unique fingerprint of each explosive as a voltammetric response, allowing at the same time its quantification.

This project is funded by the DEFRA Programme of the Belgian Defence under reference 23DEFRA006