LLNL has a successful history of developing instruments for detecting and characterizing airborne pathogens. Often, aerosol characterizing instruments require highly focused particle beams with little or no transmission losses. In addition, they need to interface to the sampling environment with a very high sampling rate so that more aerosol particles can be collected and sensitivity can be…

In 2005, LLNL researchers won a R&D 100 award for developing advanced technologies to rapidly detect the airborne release of biological threat agents. The Biological Aerosol Mass Spectrometry (BAMS) system is an instrument about the size of three podiums that can analyze individual aerosol particles in real time and at high rates to almost instantly identify the presence and concentration…