We have designed and demonstrated a standoff Raman system for detecting high explosive materials at distances up to 50 meters in ambient light conditions. In the system, light is collected using an 8-in. Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope fiber-coupled to an f/1.8 spectrograph with a gated intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) detector. A frequency-doubled Nd : YAG (532 nm) pulsed (10 Hz) laser is used as the excitation source for measuring remote spectra of samples containing up to 8% explosive materials. The explosives RDX, TNT, and PETN as well as nitrate- and chlorate-containing materials were used to evaluate the performance of the system with samples placed at distances of 27 and 50 meters. Laser power studies were performed to determine the effects of laser heating and photodegradation on the samples. Raman signal levels were found to increase linearly with increasing laser energy up to approximately 3 x 10(6) W/cm2 for all samples except TNT, which showed some evidence of photo- or thermal degradation at higher laser power densities. Detector gate width studies showed that Raman spectra could be acquired in high levels of ambient light using a 10 microsecond gate width.

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β‐Glucuronidase enzymes have been attached to a porous silicon surface through a direct silicon–carbon bond based linking system (see Figure). The attached enzymes display high activity and the photoluminescent (PL) properties and surface stability of the porous silicon are retained. Quenching of the PL is observed upon enzymatic breakdown of the substrate, leading to the possibility of a new class of chemical and biological sensors.

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We report a systematic study of the Mn 2p, 3s and 3p core-level photoemission and satellite structures for Mn model compounds. Charge-transfer from the ligand state to the 3d metal state is observed and is distinguished by prominent shake-up satellites. We also observe that the Mn 3s multiplet splitting becomes smaller as the Mn oxidation state increases, and that 3s-3d electron correlation reduces the branching ratio of the 7S:5S states in the Mn 3s spectra. In addition, as the ligand electronegativity decreases, the spin state purity is lost in the 3s spectra as evidenced by peak broadening. Our results are best understood in terms of the configuration-interaction (CI) model including intrashell electron correlation, charge-transfer and final-state screening.

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