The bomb squad has often made use of the exceptional sniffing skills of dogs to sniff out explosives that were hidden and now that sense of smell is being mimicked by nanotechnology scientists. A new device based on the acute olfactory sense of canines is being developed by them.

At the University of California a new nano tech chip has been designed by researchers. This chip emulates a dog’s nose’s ability to sniff out certain molecules contained in an explosive device. The easily portable device is highly sensitive and so far very accurate as per professor Carl Meinhart.

The device detects vapor molecules of a specific substance and can distinguish them from similar molecules so that it does not give a false alarm. Being automated the device would be an improvement on dogs, who can be ill, get tired or just have a bad day. Although the prototype is far from ready to replace dogs on the bomb squad today.

Martin Moskovits one of the scientists who has worked on the project is hopeful that the devices will one day become as common as smoke detectors are at present. Given the current world climate it may well be a good idea to install such explosive sniffing devices in public places as a safety project.