TY - JOUR N2 - The vapour pressure of most explosives is very low. Therefore, the explosive trace detection is very difficult. To overcome the problem, concentration units can be applied. At the Institute of Optoelectronics MUT, an explosive vapour concentration and decomposition unit to operate with an optoelectronic sensor of nitrogen dioxide has been developed. This unit provides an adsorption of explosive vapours from the analysed air and then their thermal decomposition. The thermal decomposition is mainly a chemical reaction, which consists in breaking up compounds into two or more simple compounds or elements. During the heating process most explosive particles, based on nitro aromatics and alkyl nitrate, release NO2 molecules and other products of pyrolysis. In this paper, the most common methods for the NO2 detection were presented. Also, an application of the concentration and decomposition unit in the NO2 optoelectronic sensor has been discussed. L1 - http://www.journals.pan.pl/Content/90304/PDF/Journal10178-VolumeXXII%20Issue1_09.pdf L2 - http://www.journals.pan.pl/Content/90304 PY - 2015 IS - No 1 EP - 110 DO - 10.1515/mms-2015-0005 KW - explosives trace detection KW - NO2 optoelectronic sensor KW - concentration and thermal decomposition A1 - Zakrzewska, Beata PB - Polish Academy of Sciences Committee on Metrology and Scientific Instrumentation VL - vol. 22 DA - 2015[2015.01.01 AD - 2015.12.31 AD] T1 - Very Sensitive Optical System with the Concentration and Decomposition Unit for Explosive Trace Detection SP - 101 UR - http://www.journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/90304 T2 - Metrology and Measurement Systems ER -