Quartz-Enhanced Photothermal-Acoustic Spectroscopy for Trace Gas Analysis

Abstract

A crystal quartz tuning fork (QTF) was used as a detector to collect and amplify laser-induced photoacoustic and photothermal waves simultaneously for trace chemical analysis. A wavelength modulation technique was applied to the proposed quartz-enhanced photothermal-acoustic spectroscopy (QEPTAS) to improve the detection signal-to-noise ratio. The QTF detector was exposed to the illumination of a near-infrared distributed feedback laser at distances of 1 m and 2 m to evaluate the QEPTAS sensor performance. The QEPTAS sensor performance was determined by detecting water vapor in ambient air using a near-infrared distributed feedback laser with a power of ~10 mW and a wavelength of 1.39 μm. With an optimized modulation depth of 0.47 cm−1, the normalized noise equivalent absorption (NNEA) coefficients of 8.4 × 10−7 W·cm−1·Hz−1/2 and 3.7 × 10−6 W·cm−1·Hz−1/2 were achieved for a distance of 1 m and 2 m, respectively. The developed QEPTAS technique reduces the requirements for laser beam quality, resulting in a simple but robust sensor structure and demonstrates the ability of remote sensing of gas concentrations.