The safeguards community currently lacks a method to rapidly determine the chemical form of radioactive and non-radioactive compounds in real time during inspection activities. Chemical speciation identification can provide important information on both the types of materials that are collected during environmental sampling and can inform inspectors as to where to focus efforts during inspections or complementary access visits. Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) is an established field technique for the detection of explosives, narcotics, and other organic compounds. More recently, electrospray ionization (ESI) has been used to introduce inorganic compounds to IMS instruments for analysis. These techniques have shown the ability to supply chemical information on the compounds analyzed. Although these laboratory based instruments use a liquid-based injection system, there is evidence in the literature of unaltered and intact pharmaceutical tablets being volatilized and ionized in open atmosphere using heat and a Ni-63 source. This work determined that a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) IMS could be used for the identification of solid uranium compounds directly after sampling using a COTS sample swipe.

保障界目前缺乏在检查活动中实时快速确定放射性和非放射性化合物化学形式的方法。化学形态识别可以提供有关在环境采样期间收集的两种材料的重要信息，并且可以通知检查人员有关在检查或补充访问期间将精力集中在哪里的信息。离子迁移谱（IMS）是一种用于检测爆炸物，麻醉品和其他有机化合物的成熟现场技术。最近，电喷雾电离（ESI）已用于将无机化合物引入IMS仪器进行分析。这些技术已显示出能够提供有关所分析化合物的化学信息的能力。尽管这些基于实验室的仪器使用基于液体的注射系统，但文献中有证据表明，未改变且完整的药物片剂会在开放气氛中使用热量和Ni-63来源挥发并离子化。这项工作确定，使用COTS样本擦拭取样后，可以直接使用现成的（IMS）IMS来鉴定固体铀化合物。