Ctrl-P to Print

Micro Gas Analyzers (MGA)

Overview

The MGA program seeks to attain tiny separation analyzer-based chemical warfare agent (CWA) sensors capable of orders of magnitude reductions in analysis time, detection limit, and power consumption, over equivalent bench top systems, while maintaining true and false alarm rates on par with bench top gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS) systems. By harnessing the advantages of micro-scale miniaturization, the MGA program is expected to yield chip-scale gas analyzers with the following performance characteristics:

An ability to identify all relevant CWA's against plausible background mixtures of more than 30 different species, including fuels (e.g., JP8), with true and false alarm rates on par with GC/MS systems, which are the gold standard of gas analysis.
Overall size less than 2 cm3, not including the power source, but including control electronics and any fluid transport, pre-concentration, and detection mechanisms, whichever used.

Vision Statement

MGA-enabled devices achieved via low cost, batch fabrication methods are expected to enable a myriad of strategic capabilities. In particular, the sheer portability of the CWA sensors sought by the MGA program should introduce a host of new applications and deployment scenarios, including wearable sensors for dismounted warriors, projectile-delivered sensors for remote detection applications, and unattended ground sensors for perimeter protection and advanced warning purposes.

The sheer portability of the CWA sensors sought by the MGA program should introduce a host of new applications and deployment scenarios.

Although the small size and power consumption sought by MGA are obvious enablers for wearable CWA sensors, it is actually MGA's pursuit of false alarm rates on par with table top GC/MS systems that makes possible this sort of "per soldier" deployment strategy, which is presently hindered by the unacceptably high incidence of false positives exhibited by current fielded portable CWA sensors. In addition, the fast analysis speed and tiny size (for resilience against high g forces) targeted by the MGA program, together with miniature wireless technologies targeted by other DARPA programs (e.g., NMASP), will enable projectile-deployed MGA's for remote detection of distant CWA's, effectively allowing miniature point detectors to operate in a stand-off-like fashion.

Furthermore, MGA-enabled low power and low false alarm rates should greatly facilitate the deployment of unattended sensor networks for first warning perimeter applications, as well as environmental monitoring applications in both military and civilian sectors. By enabling a swelling of applications, as illustrated above, miniaturization via MGA technology is expected to generate a need for high volume manufacturing that, together with wafer-level batch fabrication methods enabled by MEMS technology, should substantially lower the cost of GC/MS-equivalent systems, and thus, further fuel expansion of the application suite for MGA technology.