TY - Journal Article AU - Secchi, A. AU - Fiorello, Anna Maria AU - Dispenza, Massimiliano AU - D´Auria, S. AU - Varriale, A. AU - Ulrici, Alessandro AU - Seeber, Renato AU - Uotila, Juho AU - Venditto, Vincenzo AU - Ciambelli, Paolo AU - Antolín-Urbaneja, Juan Carlos AU - Colao, Francesco AU - Kuusela, Tom AU - Tittonen, Ilkka AU - Sievilä, Päivi AU - Maisons, Gregory TI - Drugs and precursor sensing by complementing low cost multiple techniques: overview of the European FP7 project CUSTOM PY - 2012 PB - SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING, 1000 20TH ST, PO BOX 10, BELLINGHAM, WA 98227-0010 USA AB - A large number of techniques for drug precursors chemical sensing has been developed in the latest decades. These techniques are able to screen and identify specific molecules even at very low concentration in lab environment, nevertheless the objective to build up a system which proves to be easy to use, compact, able to provide screening over a large number of compounds and discriminate them with low false alarm rate (FA) and high probability of detection (POD) is still an open issue. The project CUSTOM, funded by the European Commission within the FP7, deals with stand alone portable sensing apparatus based on multiple techniques, integrated in a complex system with a complimentary approach. The objective of the project is to achieve an optimum trade-off between opposite requirements: compactness, simplicity, low cost, sensitivity, low false alarm rate and selectivity. The final goal is the realization of an optical sensing platform able to detect traces of drug precursors compounds, such as ephedrine, safrole, acetic anhydride and the Benzyl Methyl Ketone (BMK). This is reached by implementing two main sensing techniques: the fluorescence enhanced by the use of specially developed Organic macro-molecules, and a spectroscopic technique in Mid-IR optical range. The fluorescence is highly selective with respect to the target compounds, because it is based on properly engineered fluorescent proteins which are able to bind the target analytes, as it happens in an 'immune-type' reaction. The spectroscopic technique is based on the Photo-Acoustic effect, enhanced by the use of a widely Tunable Quantum Cascade Laser. Finally, the sensing platform is equipped with an air sampling system including a pre-concentrator module based on asorption desorption cycles of a syndiotactic polystyrene polymer. UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11556/127 ER -