Cavitands: Container Molecules for Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)-Based Chemical Vapor Detection

Hazardous chemical vapors pose a serious challenge to the security and well-being of our nation and to our forces abroad. These can be dangerous chemical warfare agents (CWAs) and explosives or health hazards such as toxic industrial chemicals and materials (TICs and TIMs). A long-standing problem with chemical vapor detectors is their susceptibility to false alarms, which results in disruption of normal activities. In detectors that use a chemically sensitive coating layer, such false alarms are caused by inadequate selectivity toward target molecules. Therefore, there is a critical need to develop novel chemical coatings that can enhance selectivity of detection for specific targets or analytes. Cavitands solve this problem by enhancing the selectivity of detection towards chemical vapors.
Published in the 2005 NRL Review, p171-173. Sponsored in part by the Joint Services NMCBD Program.