Abstract
The United States Army and the first responder community are evaluating optical
detection systems for the trace detection of hazardous energetic materials. Fielded
detection systems must be evaluated with the appropriate material concentrations to
accurately identify the residue in theater. Trace levels of energetic materials have been
observed in mutable polymorphic phases and, therefore, the systems being evaluated must be
able to detect and accurately identify variant sample phases observed in spectral data. In
this work, we report on the novel application of drop-on-demand technology for the
fabrication of standardized trace 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) samples. The
drop-on-demand sample fabrication technique is compared both visually and spectrally to
the more commonly used drop-and-dry technique. As the drop-on-demand technique allows for
the fabrication of trace level hazard materials, concerted efforts focused on
characterization of the polymorphic phase changes observed with low concentrations of RDX
commonly used in drop-on-demand processing. This information is important when evaluating
optical detection technologies using samples prepared with a drop-on-demand inkjet system,
as the technology may be “trained” to detect the common bulk α phase of the explosive
based on its spectral features but fall short in positively detecting a trace quantity of
RDX (β-phase). We report the polymorphic shifts observed between α- and β-phases of this
energetic material and discuss the conditions leading to the favoring of one phase over
the other.
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