A University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering researcher is working on a piece of technology, invisible to the naked eye, that could help protect Americans from terrorist threats.
The minuscule thermo-sensors he is creating would allow, for the first time, the ability to closely monitor temperature when a bomb explodes. Recordings from these sensors, detailing exactly how the temperature evolves with time during an explosion, are expected to be key in building a device capable of more efficiently countering the effects of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.
“The temperature in a blast event changes every micron second,” said Qingkai Yu, a research assistant professor of electrical engineering at the Cullen College. “It changes so fast there is nothing out there to detect these changes, especially in a smoke and flame environment. Understanding what the temperature is during these changes and how it is distributed is critical if we are going to improve blast and weapon modeling and better design agent defeat weapons.”
Yu and Jie Lian, principle investigator and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor, are partnering to create these thermo-sensors. Their work will be supported by a three-year, $540,000 grant from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Yu and Lian are developing two types of nanostructures to record temperature in their thermo-sensors.
The first, a core-shell nanostructure, will assist in measuring the rate of the temperature increase for a blast while a nano-channel structure will record the decrease in temperature.
“The U.S. Department of Defense needs another bomb to release heat that they will use to kill the virus or decompose chemicals in these weapons of mass destruction,” Yu explained. “The idea is this bomb is to use these nanostructures mixed with dynamite in a bomb. The explosive leaves the bomb and the nanostructures will go with that so they can recall the history of the experience. Making a thermo-sensor, filled with nanostructures, it would be able to record data about this bomb to determine if it would be effective at getting rid of this bioagent.”
The temperature—essential in understanding the defusing bomb’s effectiveness—would be measured during each moment of the explosion based on specific behaviors the nanostructures exhibit.
In the nanochannels, it will be measured by the amount of melted metal alloy that fills several channels in the square structure. And in the core-shell structures, it would be based on whether the ceramic shells crack.
But there will be no real explosions in their labs. The two researchers will simulate the sudden temperature increase and trailing off using a laser. They will closely study its effects on each structure.
In the nanochannels, which will be equipped with different types of metal alloys, the researchers will determine the specific temperatures each of the alloys melt. It will be a similar process for the ceramic layer of the core-shell structures. With ceramic layers of varying thicknesses, the researchers must determine at what temperature each crack.
“If the temperature of one of these devices used to destroy the bioagent is set too high it could hurt the environment around it,” Yu said. “You want the device to be at just the right temperature that it kills the virus without further destruction and damage. That’s what we are trying to do.”