UChicago: Chemical Simulants

As a PhD student in Prof. Steven Sibener’s lab, I also completed a side project that explored the destruction of surface-adsorbed nerve agent simulants via rapid laser heating under atmospheric conditions. Following Nd:YAG laser ablation, both parent and product fragments are transmitted via capillary from an atmospheric chamber to a vacuum chamber containing a high-resolution mass spectrometer for real time measurements of product distributions under a various temperature and atmospheric conditions.