The development of a water analysis system capable of detecting both inanimate trace chemical contaminants and viable microbial contaminants has long been a project of interest to our group. The capability of detecting both chemical and biological agent sources in a single device configuration would clearly add to the value of such a product. In the present work, we describe results with chemical warfare agents from our efforts to produce a Raman system for the detection of both chemical and biological warfare agents in water. We utilize laser Raman light scattering and employ Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS)on solid state gold sol-gel detectors combined with fiber optic collection of the enhanced light signal in the sampling system to augment the normally low intensity Raman Scattering signal from trace materials.
LRRS has been shown to have the potential to make Raman spectroscopy as practical and as widely used as IR spectroscopy. The advantages LRRS brings to Raman spectrometry are its order of magnitude lower price, size, and weight from that of laboratory grade Raman spectrometers. These allow the implementation of the Raman approach with all of its advantages in a small, lightweight, portable, and affordable instrument. The disadvantages of LRRS is a small degradation in performance from that of laboratory grade Raman spectrometers. It is shown in this paper that for one class of applications, measuring the concentrations of analytes in a solvent, the degradation in performance is insignificant. This class of application includes monitoring monomers and polymer concentrations during polymerization and the chemical constituents during crystallization processes.
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