Abstract

Explosives detection systems need to be able to reliably detect a wide range of explosive materials and their vapours. The continued development and improvement of artificial olfaction techniques, including electronic nose (EN), remains important to overcome existing challenges and meet requirements posed by new improvements in the field of explosives. There is an increasingly popular trend aimed at improvement of fundamental metrological parameters of sensors for the construction of sensor arrays for the detection of ultralow target analytes. Even after decades of developments, applications of artificial olfaction instruments aimed at selective and sensitive detection of trace quantities of explosives constitute still a difficult and challenging problem. Essential aspects of artificial olfaction were theoretically discussed with an emphasis on evaluation of enhancing sensors parameters in the detection of explosives. Progress in nanotechnology and prospects in mimicking biological sense of smell successively remove the boundaries of artificial olfaction technologies. A tendency towards improved selectivity and specificity of the sensors is evident. Elaboration of novel sensing materials, data processing systems and sampling procedures are the main approaches to increase sensors’ major metrological parameters. Implementation of designed construction solutions in practice and meeting particular requirements are still a bottleneck in the commercialization process. The demonstration of achievements in artificial olfaction technology during the last couple of years is reviewed and different strategies to enhance their properties are suggested. Moreover, recent technological advancement including bio-inspired strategies, robots, drones and smartphones were described. Finally, we discuss emerging approaches to solve problems accompanied with direct and discriminative detection of explosives and outline future perspectives related to this topic.

Citations

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