Chemical warfare agents may be completely destroyed (converted to H{sub 2}O, CO{sub 2}, salts) by oxidation at 90--100 C using acidified ammonium peroxydisulfate, with recycle of NH{sub 4}SO{sub 4} byproduct. The process requires no toxic or expended catalysts and produces no secondary wastes other than the precipitated inorganic content of the agents. To determine oxidative capability of peroxydisulfate at low reductant contents, we measured rate data for oxidation of 20 diverse compounds with diverse functional groups; 4 of these have bonds similar to those found in VX, HD, and GB. On an equivalence basis, integral first-order rate constants for 100 C oxidation are 0.012{plus_minus}0.005 min{sup {minus}1} for di-isopropyl-methyl-phosphonate, methyl phosphonic acid, triethylamine, and 2,2{prime}-thiodiethanol at low initial concentrations of 50 ppM(as carbon) and pH 1.5. To provide scale-up equations for a bulk chemical agent destruction process, we measured time-dependent oxidation of bulk model chemicals at high concentrations (0.5 N) and developed and tested a quantitative model. A practical process for bulk VX destruction would begin with chemical detoxification by existing techniques (eg, hydrolysis or mild oxidation using oxone), followed by mineralization of the largely detoxified products by peroxydisulfate. Secondary wastes would be avoided by use of commercial electrolysis equipment to …

We report on the design and successful fabrication of a dichroic multilayer stack using a procedure that allowed shifting from high reflectance to high transmittance within 89 rim and surviving high laser fluences. A design approach based on quarter-wave thick layers allowed the multilayer stack to be optically tuned in the last layers of the stack. In our case, this necessitated removing the samples from the coating chamber for a transmittance scan prior to depositing the last layers. This procedure is not commonly practiced due to thermal stress-induced failures in an oxide multilayer. However, D.J. Smith and co-workers reported that reactive e-beam evaporated hafnia from a Hf source produced laser-resistant coatings that had less coating stress compared to coatings evaporated from a HfO{sub 2} source. Tuned dichroic coatings were made that had high transmittance at 941 rim and high reflectance at 1030 nm. The coating was exposed for 5 minutes to a 100 kW/cm{sup 2} 1064 nm (180-ns pulsewidth, 10.7 kHz) laser beam and survived without microscopic damage. The same coating survived a 140 kW/cm{sup 2} of laser intensity without catastrophic damage before optical tuning were performed.