Making airport security checks faster and more reliable

Boarding your flight with a bottle of water could once again become a reality. Morpho (a Safran company) has developed a new airport baggage scanner that can identify dangerous liquids inside baggage. The new scanner is more accurate than what is currently available on the market, and, with four times fewer false alarms—and the resulting manual searches—it should help get travelers with permissible liquids in their baggage to their gates faster.

Technology

Morpho’s checkpoint imaging system, which uses X-ray diffraction, is made up of multiple semiconductor-based detectors developed by Leti. The device, for which Leti holds around ten patents, operates at ambient temperature and combines a Cd(Zn)Te detector and CMOS read circuit providing photon counting and energy measurement capabilities.

Morpho combined Leti’s innovation with a multi-energy signal processing method that analyzes the diffracted photons to determine a substance’s molecular structure—which is then used to identify the substance.

This unique detection and identification system brings false alarms down drastically, from 20% with current systems to just 5%.