A pattern recognition based fluorescence quenching assay for the detection and identification of nitrated explosive analytes

Herein we report a differential array of micelle-solubilized fluorophores for the detection and identification of small nitrated analytes, such as the explosives TNT, tetryl, RDX and HMX. The quenching ability of the analytes can be used to correlate their analyte identity, wherein the quenching patterns generated from the differential array are used in linear discriminant analysis (LDA). LDA results in a well-clustered two-dimensional plot, and a jack-knife analysis of the data suggests that this system can be used to identify unknown samples of analyte with 96 % accuracy and with a detection limit of 19 muM.