Studies on the utilization of stripping voltammetry technique in the detection of high-energy materials

Research and development activities are on in many laboratories to develop methods for detecting energetic materials at the trace level. Production or application of high-energy materials may also contaminate the natural environmental systems. Therefore, development of a simple, portable, and inexpensive device for determining explosives at the trace levels is highly desirable. In this study, a stripping voltammetry technique is used for their analytical determination. The study is conducted in an acetonitrile medium. Optimum conditions are obtained in stripping voltammetry for individual analytes. The stripping voltammetric method is compound-selective and can be used for determining a particular high-energy material in a mixture. In this paper, we report the development of an electro-analytical procedure for detecting conventional energetic materials such as Tetryl, TNT, PETN, RDX, and HMX, using the stripping voltammetric method.