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The article describes application of cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy (CEAS) for detection of nitrogen oxides and vapours of explosives. The oxides are important greenhouse gases that are of large influence on environment, living organisms and human health. These compounds are also markers of some human diseases as well as they are emitted by commonly used explosives. Therefore sensitive nitrogen oxides sensors are of great importance for many applications, e. g. for environment protection (air monitoring), for medicine investigation (analyzing of exhaled air) and finally for explosives detection. In the Institute of Optoelectronics MUT different types of optoelectronic sensors employing CEAS were developed. They were designed to measure trace concentration of nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, and nitrous oxide. The sensors provide opportunity for simultaneous measurement of these gases concentration at ppb level. Their sensitivity is comparable with sensitivities of instruments based on other methods, e.g. gas chromatography or mass spectrometry. Our sensors were used for some explosives detection as well. The experiment showed that the sensors provide possibility to detect explosive devices consisting of nitroglycerine, ammonium nitrate, TNT, PETN, RDX and HMX.
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