2012 MRes projects
- Twitter and Crime: The spatio-temporal link between social-media and criminal activity
- To what extent do water treatment processes affect the concentration of peroxide explosives in river water?
- Dual-band Frequency Reconfigurable Antennas
- Incorporating Nanostructures to Enhance the Performance of Semiconducting Metal
- A relevance study determining the use of GSR upon clothing and shoes as an item of evidence
- Automating the conceptual analysis of large-scale text-based subjective data sets
- Assessing the potential of e-noses for illicit drug detection in future drug-trafficking interdiction strategies
- Judgement in UK fingermark recovery: room for development?
- Modelling the allocation of crowd control resources
- Comparative study of the different feature extraction algorithms used for fingerprint identification
- Domain Adaptation of Statistical Classifiers for Security-related Bug Reports
- The detection of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories using semiconducting metal oxide gas sensors
- The evaluation of geochemical analysis methods for forensic provenance and interpretation
- Confirmation bias: A Study of biasability within Forensic anthropological visual assessments on skeletal remains
- Statistical change point detection of internet traffic
- Trace evidence dynamics: assessing the transfer and persistence of microbial diatom evidence in forensic investigation
- Data Communication for Underwater Sensor Networks
- Automated Cargo Inspection: Exploring the use of Machine Vision in X-ray Transmission Imaging
- Network Externalities and Migration: An Agent-Based Model Distinguishing Documented and Undocumented Flows
 |
 |
 |
 |
Incorporating Nanostructures to Enhance the Performance of Semiconducting Metal
21 March 2013
Gwyn Evans
Detection of explosive materials used in homemade devices has become a heightened priority in recent years, prompting a large increase in related research. Developments have been made using semiconducting metal oxides gas sensors for the detection of explosive vapours, highlighting the advantages of the technology, such as low cost, good sensitivity and rapid response times to target explosives. However, there are obstacles to overcome that have so far limited practical applications in the security field. Firstly, materials currently used in gas sensors require a high operating temperature to achieve appropriate sensitivity to the target vapour. This requires a power source that is not suitable for a discreet or portable device. Secondly, the material may respond to a range of gases of varying concentrations, lacking the selectivity required to function as a specific detector. Recent research suggests that incorporating nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes or graphene oxide, with traditional gas sensing materials can reduce their operating temperature, thus improving suitability for practical use. An increase in sensitivity to trace gases found in homemade explosives has also been reported, along with an improved sensor recovery time. Research has shown that the addition of various zeolites to the sensing material produces a degree of selectivity towards certain gases. The project will build upon this research, fabricating hybrid gas sensing materials using nanostructures such as carbon nanotubes, zeolites, and graphene oxide
