Non-destructive Electromagnetic Wave Sensor for Hazardous Biological Materials

A novel non-destructive electromagnetic wave (EM) sensor for rapid identification of biological material is presented in this paper. Biological treats could be defined as biological agents such as bacteria spores, viruses and toxins. Spores can disable or kill people, animals and crops. Therefore, it is important to identify the hazard in rapid and nondestructive manner to make a safer environment. In this research, a 2.45 GHz microwave resonator was used to detect the dipliconic acid (DPA), which is the bio-maker of bacillus spores. A promising results were obtained by detecting the DPA from 0.001M - 0.3M concentration at frequency of 2.4 GHz, which are the fundamental mode (TM101) of the designed cavity. In addition, different species of bacillus spores was detected at frequency approximate at 2.36 GHz. The results concluded that electromagnetic wave sensors may have the potential for use as a non-destructive and real time sensor to detect bacillus spores. The EM principle could be extended to detect different hazardous biological materials by identify the “finger print” of specific biological materials on different surfaces.