Inspecting letters with terahertz waves

Alert at Schloss Bellevue. A suspicious letter addressed to German President Joachim Gauck has been detected, which might contain a bomb. Not willing to take any risks, the bomb squad is called out to destroy the package. Later investigations revealed that the envelope did not contain any explosives, but better safe than sorry. A year ago, this event created turmoil in the mail sorting office in Berlin, because at the time there was no safe and simple way of reliably detecting the presence of explosives or drugs in letters and small packets. A new solution is offered by the terahertz scanner developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM in Kaiserslautern in collaboration with Hübner GmbH & Co. KG in Kassel. Their T-COGNITION system is capable of detecting and identifying the hidden content of suspicious packages or envelopes without having to open them. One of this year’s Joseph von Fraunhofer prizes was awarded to Prof. Dr. René Beigang of Fraunhofer IPM and Dipl.-Ing. Thorsten Sprenger, Head of Public Security and Photonics at Hübner, for their work on the terahertz scanner for the secure identification of hazardous materials and illicit drugs in postal consignments.

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