Anal Chem. 2019 Apr 16;91(8):5323-5330. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b00257. Epub 2019 Mar 29.
The ability to detect traces of highly energetic explosive materials sensitively, selectively, accurately, and rapidly could be of enormous benefit to civilian national security, military applications, and environmental monitoring. Unfortunately, the detection of explosives still poses a largely unmet arduous analytical problem, making their detection an issue of burning immediacy and a massive current challenge in terms of research and development. Although numerous explosive detection approaches have been developed, these methods are usually time-consuming, require bulky equipment, tedious sample preparation, a trained operator, cannot be miniaturized, and lack the ability to perform automated real-time high-throughput analysis, strongly handicapping their mass deployment. Here, we present the first demonstration of the "direct" electrochemical approach for the sensitive, selective, and rapid vapor trace detection of TATP and HMTD, under ambient conditions, unaffected by the presence of oxygen and hydrogen peroxide species, down to concentrations lower than 10 ppb. The method is based on the use of Ag-nanoparticles-decorated carbon microfibers air-collecting electrodes (μCF), which allow for the selective direct detection of the organic peroxide explosives, through opening multiple redox routes, not existent in the undecorated carbon electrodes. Finally, we demonstrate the direct and rapid detection of TATP and HMTD explosive species from real-world air samples.
能够灵敏、选择性、准确和快速地检测到高能量爆炸物的痕迹，这将对民用国家安全、军事应用和环境监测有巨大的益处。不幸的是，爆炸物的检测仍然是一个尚未得到充分解决的艰巨分析问题，这使得它们的检测成为一个紧迫的问题，也是研究和开发方面的一个巨大挑战。尽管已经开发出了许多爆炸物检测方法，但这些方法通常耗时、需要大型设备、繁琐的样品制备、需要经过培训的操作人员，无法小型化，并且缺乏进行自动化实时高通量分析的能力，这严重限制了它们的大规模部署。在这里，我们首次展示了在环境条件下，“直接”电化学方法对 TATP 和 HMTD 的灵敏、选择性和快速蒸气痕量检测的应用，不受氧气和过氧化氢物质的存在影响，检测下限低至 10ppb 以下。该方法基于使用 Ag 纳米粒子修饰的碳纤维微纤维空气收集电极（μCF），通过打开多个在未修饰的碳电极中不存在的氧化还原途径，实现了对有机过氧化物爆炸物的选择性直接检测。最后，我们展示了从实际空气样本中直接快速检测 TATP 和 HMTD 爆炸物的能力。
