A new method for quantitative analysis of mixtures of illicit drugs with THz time domain spectroscopy was proposed and verified experimentally. In traditional method we need fingerprints of all the pure chemical components. In practical as only the objective components in a mixture and their absorption features are known, it is necessary and important to present a more practical technique for the detection and identification. Our new method of quantitatively inspect of the mixtures of illicit drugs is developed by using derivative spectrum. In this method, the ratio of objective components in a mixture can be obtained on the assumption that all objective components in the mixture and their absorption features are known but the unknown components are not needed. Then methamphetamine and flour, a illicit drug and a common adulterant, were selected for our experiment. The experimental result verified the effectiveness of the method, which suggested that it could be an effective method for quantitative identification of illicit drugs. This THz spectroscopy technique is great significant in the real-world applications of illicit drugs quantitative analysis. It could be an effective method in the field of security and pharmaceuticals inspection.

Date Published: 4 August 2009
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 7385, International Symposium on Photoelectronic Detection and Imaging 2009: Terahertz and High Energy Radiation Detection Technologies and Applications, 73850I (4 August 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.834816

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7385:
International Symposium on Photoelectronic Detection and Imaging 2009: Terahertz and High Energy Radiation Detection Technologies and Applications
X.-C. Zhang; James M. Ryan; Cun-lin Zhang; Chuan-xiang Tang, Editor(s)