ABSTRACT
Quartz tuning fork (QTF)-based techniques of photoacoustic spectroscopy and thermoelastic spectroscopy play a significant role in trace gas sensing due to unique high sensitivity and compactness. However, the stability of both techniques remains plagued by the inevitable and unpredictable laser power variation and demodulation phase variation. Herein, we investigate the phase change of a QTF when integrating both techniques for enhanced gas sensing. By demonstrating harmonic phase-sensitive methane detection as an example, we achieve stable gas measurement at varying laser power (2.4-9.4â¯mW) and varying demodulation phase (-90-90°). Besides, this method shows more tolerance to resonant frequency drift, contributing to a small signal fluctuation of ≤ 6.4â¯% over a wide modulation range (>10 times of the QTF bandwidth). The realization of harmonic-phase detection allows strengthening the stability of QTF-based sensors in a simple manner, especially when stable parameters, such as laser power, demodulation phase, even resonant frequency, cannot always be maintained.
ABSTRACT
Dissolved gases in the aquatic environment are critical to understanding the population of aquatic organisms and the ocean. Currently, laser absorption techniques based on membrane separation technology have made great strides in dissolved gas detection. However, the prolonged water-gas separation time of permeable membranes remains a key obstacle to the efficiency of dissolved gas analysis. To mitigate these limitations, we demonstrated direct measurement of dissolved gas using the evanescent-wave absorption spectroscopy of a tapered silica micro-fiber. It enhanced the analysis efficiency of dissolved gases without water-gas separation or sample preparation. The feasibility of this sensor for direct measurement of dissolved gases was verified by taking the detection of dissolved ammonia as an example. With a sensing length of 5 mm and a consumption of ~50 µL, this sensor achieves a system response time of ~11 min and a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 0.015%. Possible strategies are discussed for further performance improvement in in-situ applications requiring fast and highly sensitive dissolved gas sensing.
ABSTRACT
The operation of cavity-enhanced techniques usually requires independent pre-calibration of the mirror reflectivity to precisely quantify the absorption. Here we show how to directly calibrate the effective mirror reflectivity without using any gas samples of known concentration or high-speed optical/electrical devices. Leveraging a phase modulator to generate sidebands, we are able to record Pound-Drever-Hall error signals shaped by cavity modes that can reveal the effective reflectivity after waveform analysis. As an example, we demonstrated the reflectivity calibration of a pair of near-infrared mirrors over 80â nm with a free spectral range-limited resolution, illustrating a reflectivity uncertainty of 2 × 10-5 in the center part of the refection wavelength range of the mirrors and larger at the edges. With an effective reflectivity of 0.9982 (finesse â¼1746) inferred at 1531.6â nm, a short â¼ 8-cm Fabry-Pérot cavity achieved a minimum detectable absorption coefficient of 9.1 × 10-9â cm-1 for trace C2H2 detection. This method, by providing convenient calibration in an almost real-time manner, would enable more practical cavity-enhanced gas measurement even with potential mirror reflectivity degradation.
ABSTRACT
We report on the development of all-fiber active photoacoustic spectroscopy, where active photoacoustic effect is generated by embedding a micro-nano fiber inside a fiber laser resonator to exploit the evanescent field of the high intracavity power. Acetylene detection at 1530.37â nm was selected for gas sensing demonstration. With a small diameter of 1.1â µm, the tapped fiber exploited â¼20% intracavity power for the evanescent-wave photoacoustic excitation, while only introduced a low intrinsic cavity loss of 0.08â dB. Our sensor achieved a minimum detection limit of 1â ppm at an integration time of 10 s, which can be improved to 73 ppb at 1000 s benefited from the high system stability. The sensing dynamic range was determined to be more than five orders. This spectroscopic technique combines fiber laser, photoacoustic spectroscopy, and fiber evanescent-wave absorption to achieve gas sensing with high flexibility, low optical noise, and easy optical alignment. Current limitations were discussed in detail to explore feasible ways to improve the performance in response time, dynamic range and sensitivity.
ABSTRACT
We have developed a rapid quartz enhanced spectrophone for carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement, in which the laser wavelength was tightly locked to a CO2 absorption line and a custom quartz tuning fork (QTF) operating at 12.5 kHz was employed. The intrinsic QTF oscillation-limited response time, as well as the optimal feedback interval, was experimentally investigated. By tightly locking the laser to the R(16) transition of CO2, we obtained a stable laser operation with its center wavelength variation kept within 0.0002 cm-1, merely three times the laser linewidth. The reported CO2 sensor achieved a detection limit of 7 ppm, corresponding to a normalized noise equivalent absorption coefficient (NNEA) of 4.7 × 10-9 W·cm-1·Hz-1/2, at a response time of 0.5 s. The detection limit can be further improved to 0.45 ppm at an integration time of 270 s, illustrating a good system stability. This spectrophone enables the realization of compact and fast-response gas sensors for many scenarios, where CO2 concentration from sub-ppm to hundreds of thousands of ppm is expected.
ABSTRACT
By combining frequency-division multiplexing and normalized wavelength modulation spectroscopy, a robust remote multi-species sensor was developed and demonstrated for practical hydrocarbon monitoring. Independently modulated laser beams are combined to simultaneously interrogate different gas samples using an open-ended centimeter-size multipass cell. Gas species of interest are demodulated with the second harmonics to enhance sensitivity, and high immunity to laser power variation is achieved by normalizing to the corresponding first harmonics. Performance of the optical sensor was experimentally evaluated using methane (CH4) and acetylene (C2H2) samples, which were separated by a 3-km fiber cable from the laser source. Sub-ppm sensitivity with 1-s time resolution was achieved for both gas species. Moreover, even with large laser intensity fluctuations ranging from 0 to 6 dB, the noise can be kept within 1.38 times as much as that of a stable intensity case. The reported spectroscopic technique would provide a promising optical sensor for remote monitoring of multi hazardous gases with high robustness.