Gares, Katie
(2017)
UV RESONANCE RAMAN INVESTIGATION OF EXPLOSIVES’ UV PHOTOCHEMISTRY.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Detection of explosives has become an important field of research due to the increased number of terrorist attacks utilizing improvised explosive devices (IEDs). We show that UV resonance Raman (UVRR) spectroscopy is a sensitive and incisive technique for detection of explosives. Deep UV excitation of explosives gives resonance enhancement and greater sensitivity enabling trace detection of explosives and their photochemical products.
We demonstrate how we can utilize UVRR to analyze characteristic spectral changes that result from explosives’ photochemistry. In this work, we examined the 229 nm photochemistry of some of the main military explosives, TNT, RDX, and PETN in solution and solid state. We monitored the decrease in intensity of the UVRR bands of the initial explosive and the increase in intensity of the UVRR photoproduct bands during photolysis. Detection of photochemical product UVRR bands can be used to detect the previous presence of explosives even after they have been photolyzed. We determined solution state quantum yields, which gives insight to the susceptibility of the explosive to photolysis upon irradiation. We also determined the initial photoproducts formed by photolysis by using high performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC-HRMS) measurements.
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| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
|
| Date: |
23 September 2017 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
26 July 2017 |
| Approval Date: |
23 September 2017 |
| Submission Date: |
4 August 2017 |
| Access Restriction: |
1 year -- Restrict access to University of Pittsburgh for a period of 1 year. |
| Number of Pages: |
152 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Chemistry |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
resonance Raman, explosives, photochemistry, standoff detection, spectroscopy |
| Date Deposited: |
24 Sep 2017 01:31 |
| Last Modified: |
23 Sep 2018 05:15 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/32991 |
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