Detecting Trace Amounts of Narcotics in Serum by Delayed Luminescence

This paper was designed to test the feasibility of optical identification of trace amounts of narcotics in serum using photoinduced delayed luminescence (DL). Comparative investigation of control serum and contaminated samples with methamphetamine and heroin was conducted. For the control serum without chemical contamination, the delayed photon emission decay shows an intrinsic lifetime of about 38.4 ms, whereas DL decay curves of the serum containing 1 × 10-5 mol/L of methamphetamine and 1 × 10-5 mol/L of heroin reveal shortened characteristic lifetimes of 19.3 and 24.6 ms, respectively. Experimental results demonstrate that the lifetime can be used as an indicator of containing narcotics in serum, promising a new method for detecting trace amounts of narcotics in serum.