Southampton, UK 22nd January, 2007 – D3, the world leader in design and production of stable and reproducible detection surfaces, has further refined its SE1000 Toolkit for use in Homeland Security and Defense application areas. Comprising a D3 Raman spectrometer and the company’s unique Klarite substrates, this platform enables faster, trace-level identification of explosive, chemical and biological samples.

The SE1000 is based around the relatively new technique of Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) which increases the normally very weak Raman signals by as much as a million-fold, providing ultra high sensitivity to detect molecules even at sub-picogram levels. Until now, SERS has been confined to the laboratory owing to the instability of the substrates at the heart of the analysis. Klarite effectively changes the applicability of the technique by using a substrate with a stable, uniform structure.

“Providing security against Biological, Chemical and Explosive threats requires a critical level of detection sensitivity, in addition to the ability to work within a field-based situation.” said Dr Philip Hargreaves, Director of Business Development and Marketing at D3. “We have conclusively proved fast, efficient detection of explosive and nerve agent simulants at low levels in both liquid and vapor phases using our unique Klarite substrates. These substrates are also stable and reproducible enough to be used in the field.”

The work at D3 is announced on the back of a recent proceedings paper presented by the Army Research Laboratories (ARL) at SPIE Optics East in October 2006. This work demonstrates the use of Klarite substrates to detect and identify deadly spores from organisms such as Bacillus.

D3 is currently working with several partners in the Homeland Security and Defense arenas to synergize its SERS detection technology with existing complementary systems.