Xu Dexin, Li Cong, Yang Liu, Zhu Wenchao, Huang Bangdou, Zhang Cheng, Shao Tao
State Key Laboratory of NBC Protection for Civilian, Beijing, China.
Beijing International S&T Cooperation Base for Plasma Science and Energy Conversion, Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Front Chem. 2023 Jun 2;11:1173870. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2023.1173870. eCollection 2023.
Sulfur mustard (SM) is one kind of highly toxic chemical warfare agent and easy to spread, while existing detection methods cannot fulfill the requirement of rapid response, good portability, and cost competitiveness at the same time. In this work, the microwave atmospheric pressure plasma optical emission spectroscopy (MW-APP-OES) method, taking the advantage of non-thermal equilibrium, high reactivity, and high purity of MW plasma, is developed to detect three kinds of SM simulants, i.e., 2-chloroethyl ethyl sulfide, dipropyl disulfide, and ethanethiol. Characteristic OES from both atom lines (C I and Cl I) and radical bands (CS, CH, and C) is identified, confirming MW-APP-OES can preserve more information about target agents without full atomization. Gas flow rate and MW power are optimized to achieve the best analytical results. Good linearity is obtained from the calibration curve for the CS band (linear coefficients > 0.995) over a wide range of concentrations, and a limit of detection down to sub-ppm is achieved with response time on the order of second. With SM simulants as examples, the analytical results in this work indicate that MW-APP-OES is a promising method for real-time and in-site detection of chemical warfare agents.
硫芥气（SM）是一种剧毒化学战剂，且易于扩散，而现有的检测方法无法同时满足快速响应、良好便携性和成本竞争力的要求。在这项工作中，利用微波等离子体的非热平衡、高反应活性和高纯度的特点，开发了微波大气压等离子体发射光谱法（MW-APP-OES）来检测三种硫芥气模拟物，即2-氯乙基乙基硫醚、二丙基二硫醚和乙硫醇。识别出了来自原子谱线（C I和Cl I）和自由基谱带（CS、CH和C）的特征发射光谱，证实MW-APP-OES在不完全原子化的情况下能够保留更多关于目标物的信息。优化了气体流速和微波功率以获得最佳分析结果。在很宽的浓度范围内，CS谱带的校准曲线具有良好的线性（线性系数>0.995），检测限低至亚ppm级，响应时间为秒级。以硫芥气模拟物为例，这项工作的分析结果表明MW-APP-OES是一种用于实时现场检测化学战剂的有前景的方法。
