Scientists in the US have developed a way to detect and differentiate between mixtures of plasticisers within plastic explosives such as Semtex and C4 to provide information for anti-terrorism activities.
The team bound a fluorescent indicator to a plasma protein, which then binds to the plasticisers. A cross-reactive array was used to reveal which plasticisers were present in the explosive mixtures.
Link to journal article
Exploration of Plasticizer and Plastic Explosive Detection and Differentiation with Serum Albumin Cross-Reactive Arrays
M A Ivy et al
Chem. Sci., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/c2sc20083j
