Quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) is a highly sensitive optical technique, suitable for real-time and in situ trace gas detection. In QEPAS, Quartz tuning forks (QTF) are employed as piezoelectric transducers of sound waves, induced by gas non-radiative energy relaxation following an infrared modulated light absorption. The generated electric signal depends on the gas concentration. An accurate and reliable QEPAS measurement requires: i) the QTF characterization, in terms of resonance frequency and quality factor and ii) the tuning range scan of the laser employed to detect the selected gas. These two operations could take several minutes. Beat frequency QEPAS (BF-QEPAS) is an alternative approach to standard QEPAS. In BF-QEPAS, a fast scan of the laser tuning range is employed to generate an acoustic pulse. Gas concentration, QTF resonance frequency, and quality factor can be measured acquiring and analyzing the transient response of the QTF to the acoustic pulse. In this work, a custom T-shaped QTF was employed to detect nitrogen monoxide (NO), targeting its absorption feature at 1900.07 cm-1 with an interband cascade laser. A minimum detection limit as low as 180 ppb of NO at an integration time of 5 ms was achieved, and a highly accurate measurement of the QTF resonance frequency and quality factor were demonstrated using BF-QEPAS. Finally, the possibility to fully scan the laser tuning range in less than 15 s was proved.
We report on a highly sensitive and selective optical sensor for detection of carbon monoxide (CO) in a sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) gas matrix by using quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) technique. The sensor uses a mid-infrared quantum cascade laser with central wavelength at 4.61 μm as light source and a spectrophone consisting of a novel 8 kHz T-shaped quartz tuning fork with grooved prongs coupled with a pair of resonator tubes for photoacoustic detection. A minimum detection limit of 10 ppb at 10 s of signal integration time was achieved.
The main limitations of tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) sensors are represented by the high cost, limited detection bandwidth and low adaptability of photodetectors to work in harsh environments. In this work we present an extensive study on quartz tuning forks (QTFs) used as photodetectors, exploiting the opto-thermo-elastic energy conversion arising from the laser radiation-QTF interaction. The role of the strain field, accumulation time and working pressure of the quartz resonator in this Light-Induced Thermo-Elastic Spectroscopy (LITES) approach was then evaluated for a whole set of tuning forks. Once identified the most performant resonator, this QTF was implemented in a TDLAS setup and it was combined with laser diodes, interband- and quantum-cascade laser sources emitting from 1 μm to 10.5 μm and targeting different gas spacies. The detection limits achieved for the QTF were comparable or even lower down to one order of magnitude with respect to market-available photodetectors.
Many applications such as toxic gas detection or H2S monitoring in natural gas require operation in the THz spectral region, where gas species show distinct spectral “fingerprints” that can be easily discriminated by the gas matrix background absorption features.
So far, continuous-wave THz quantum cascade lasers employed in quartz-enhanced photoacoustic (QEPAS) sensors required liquid helium-cooling systems. In this work, we demonstrated the first liquid nitrogen-cooled THz QEPAS sensor for H2S detection operated in pulsed mode and mounting a spectrophone based on a quartz tuning fork with 1.5 mm prong spacing. A sensitivity level in the part-per-billion concentration range was achieved.
KEYWORDS: Photoacoustic spectroscopy, Quartz, Acoustics, Resonators, Gas lasers, Quantum cascade lasers, Microresonators, Sensors, Interference (communication), Signal to noise ratio
We report here on the realization of a single-tube on-beam quartz-enhanced photoacoustic (QEPAS) spectroscopy sensor employing a custom-made quartz tuning fork (QTF) with a large prong spacing. The prongs of the QTF have been designed in order to provide a quality factor twice higher when the QTF operates in the first overtone flexural mode than in the fundamental mode. The influence of the microresonator tube on the main parameters characterizing the sensing performance of the QEPAS spectrophone, including the quality factor, the magnitude of the QEPAS signal and the associated background noise was investigated in detail.
Nitrogen oxides (NOx), including nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) play important roles in determining the photochemistry of the ambient atmosphere, controlling the production of tropospheric ozone, affecting the concentration levels of the hydroxyl radical, and forming acid precipitation. A sensor system capable of simultaneous measurements of NO and NO2 by using a commercial 76 m astigmatic multi-pass gas cell (MPGC) was developed in order to enable fastresponse NOx detection. A continuous wave (CW), distributed-feedback (DFB) quantum cascade laser (QCL) and a CW external-cavity (EC) QCL were employed for targeting a NO absorption doublet at 1900.075 cm-1 and a NO2 absorption line at 1630.33 cm-1, respectively. Both laser beams were combined and transmitted through the MPGC in an identical optical path and subsequently detected by a single mid-infrared detector. A frequency modulation multiplexing scheme was implemented by modulating the DFB-QCL and EC-QCL at different frequencies and demodulating the detector signal with two Labview software based lock-in amplifiers to extract the corresponding second-harmonic (2f) components. Continuous monitoring of NO and NO2 concentration levels was achieved by locking the laser frequencies to the selected absorption lines utilizing a reference cell filled with high concentrations of NO and NO2. The experimental results indicate minor performance degradation associated with frequency modulation multiplexing and no cross talk between the two multiplexed detection channels. The performance of the reported sensor system was evaluated for real time, sensitive and precise detection of NO and NO2 simultaneously.
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