Star Trek Enterprise Tricorder  - Purdue University

Purdue University researchers demonstrated a portable instrument, something like the tricorders used by the crew of the Star Trek Enterprise. The researchers claim, this mass spectrometer is able to identify any substance in less than a second.

The mass spectrometers used today for airport security can weigh as much as 300 pounds, and trace amounts of the target substances must be swabbed and inserted in the instruments’ test chamber before the units can scan for them. Cooks’ DESI sample collection method does not require swabbing. Instead, a puff of ionized water vapor absorbs any trace substance on a scanned item and transfers the sample to the mass spectrometer’s ion trap. The control computer then reads out the mass of the elements in the compound and matches that data against the patterns saved in the unit’s database. The entire procedure takes less than a second.

Purdue University researcher said:

The advantage of DESI is that many military explosives, as well as most biological compounds, do not give off vapors…

We compare to the tricorder of the Star Trek Enterprise, because it is not only handheld but can determine the precise chemical composition of a substance noninvasively…

The noninvasive aspect could suit the device for medical applications, such as scanning for biomarkers that provide an early warning of disease. Cooks, Purdue University researcher also predicts that the food-processing industry will use the device to detect bacterial contaminants before food products leave the plant.

Source: Star Trek Enterprise Tricorder