The Development of a Portable and Reusable Ketamine Sensor

Ketamine is a drug used to cause loss of consciousness or anesthesia. In the wrong hands, it can be used to influence judgment and behavior and can put a person at risk for unwanted or dangerous sexual activity. Along with Gamma Hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and rohypnol, ketamine is one of the most common date rape drugs. This study describes the development of capacitance and admittance spectroscopy-based sensors to differentiate beverages with or without ketamine. The beverages used in this study were regular alcoholic whisky in which various concentrations of ketamine were diluted. The results show that the proposed method can accurately quantify ketamine content by measuring capacitance data at the characteristic measurement frequencies of 7.69 MHz, with a sensitivity of 0.6 nF/(ng/μL). The product of the admittance and capacitance values measured at 6.75 MHz can significantly identify the presence of ketamine.