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Article: Cantilevers detect trace amounts of explosives.(Bomb Sniffer)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- August 23, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Plastic explosives are difficult to detect because a bomb maker can mold them into concealable or inconspicuous objects. Consider shoe bombs. Existing technologies for sensing explosives are bulky and expensive. Now, however, researchers have fabricated a cheap sensor that can detect the barest whiff of these materials in the air and do so in a matter of seconds.
At the heart of the device is a V-shaped silicon cantilever, 180 micrometers long by 25 micrometers wide, Researchers already use such microcantilevers for detecting minute quantities of biological molecules such as DNA and proteins (SN: 10/13/01, p. 237). In the new scheme, the researchers adapted the ...