Forensic signatures of a chemical weapon precursor DMPADC for determination of a synthetic route

Chemical forensics has been widely recognized as an important tool to investigate alleged use of chemical weapons and/or to identify the illicit production of chemical warfare agents. This paper describes the use of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to determine chemical attribution signatures (CAS) N,N-dimethylphosphoramidic dichloride (DMPADC), a key precursor of tabun, for tracking the production of tabun. Synthetic samples were identified and classified by using GC-MS and chemometrics. Analysis samples (n = 27) were collected from three synthetic DMPADC routes; 20 potential CAS were identified, and the structures of five CAS were assigned. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to summarize the distribution trend of the samples and to check for the presence of outliers. A Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLSDA) model was established to discriminate and classify the synthetic samples. The proposed model in this paper has high predictive ability, and the test set samples can be correctly categorized.

Automated summary

This study utilized gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to track the production of tabun by analyzing synthetic DMPADC, successfully discriminating and classifying synthetic samples through the establishment of a model.