Jul 21, 2014 09:56 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

A team of scientists has developed new, ultra-sensitive laser technology that could one-up all previous methods of bomb-detection.

Reported in a press release, the team developed a light-based sensor meant to be able to detect miniscule concentrations of explosives. Such explosives are hard to detect and therefore popular among various terrorist groups.

With the research being led by Xiang Zhang, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of California (UC) Berkeley, the team published their study Sunday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

"Optical explosive sensors are very sensitive and compact," Zhang, the director of the National Science Foundation Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at UC Berkeley, said in the release. "The ability to magnify such a small trace of an explosive to create a detectable signal is a major development in plasmon sensor technology, which is one of the most powerful tools we have today."

In the testing phase of the study, the researchers found the laser was as pinpoint accurate as they hoped. It was able to detect the concentrations of explosives at 0.67 parts per billion, 0.4 parts per billion and 7.2 parts per million.

One part per billion is quite literally a needle in a haystack.

"We think that higher electron deficiency of explosives leads to a stronger interaction with the semiconductor sensor," study co-lead author Sadao Ota, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Tokyo and a former Ph.D. student in Zhang's lab, said in the release.

The new laser technology could also be coming at a key point in time for the U.S. national defense. Attorney General Eric Holder has indicated of late that is has been "extremely concerned" to learn of Yemeni bomb-makers seeking out Syrian militants to arm mobile devices with hard-to-trace explosives.

Additionally, bomb-makers could easily have already adapted to the traditional methods of detection.

"Bomb-sniffing dogs are expensive to train and they can become tired," another study co-lead author Ren-Min Ma, an assistant professor of physics at Peking University, said in the release. "The other thing we see at airports is the use of swabs to check for explosive residue, but those have relatively low-sensitivity and require physical contact. Our technology could lead to a bomb-detecting chip for a handheld device that can detect the tiny-trace vapor in the air of the explosive's small molecules."

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