Sensor Sensitivity

[pioneer]

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have recently been able to exploit a phenomenon that has for a long time stopped electronics manufacturers from doing what they do best in order to create a new class of advanced chemical and biological sensors. The new instrument is capable of detecting extremely small amounts of various compounds in the air, and acts pretty much like a dog's sniffer. The innovation was produced in the laboratory of researcher Panos Datskos, who is the leader of the current efforts.

“While the research community has been avoiding the nonlinearity associated with the nanoscale mechanical oscillators, we are embracing it. In the end, we hope to have a device capable of detecting incredibly small amounts of explosives compared to today's chemical sensors,” explains ORNL Materials Sciences Division Center for Nanophase member Nickolay Lavrik, who was also the co-developer of the new system. The goal here is to make detecting explosives, biological agents and narcotics faster and more efficiently than ever before, the team says. - source: softpedia.com