Highly sensitive acetylene detection based on multi-pass retro-reflection-cavity-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy and a fiber amplified diode laser.

In this paper, a multi-pass retro-reflection-cavity-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) based gas sensor is reported for the first time. The multi-pass retro-reflection-cavity consisted of two right-angle prisms and was designed to reflect the laser beam to pass through the photoacoustic (PA) cell four times, which improved the acetylene (C2H2)-PAS sensor signal level significantly. The optical power of a near-infrared distributed feedback (DFB) diode laser emitting a continuous wave (CW) was amplified to 1000 mW with an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. The background noise was reduced with wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) and 2nd harmonic demodulation techniques. The linear optical power and concentration response of such a PAS sensor were investigated, and the experimental results showed excellent characteristics. When the integration the time of the sensor system was set to 1 s, the minimum detection limit (MDL) for C2H2 detection was 8.17 ppb, which corresponds to a normalized noise equivalent absorption coefficient (NNEA) of 1.84 × 10-8 cm-1W/√Hz. The long-term stability of such a multi-pass retro-reflection-cavity-enhanced PAS based C2H2 sensor was evaluated by an Allan deviation analysis. It was demonstrated that the multi-pass retro-reflection-cavity-enhanced PAS sensor had an excellent stability. An MDL of 600 ppt was achieved when the integration time was set to ~1000 s. It was verified that the method of multi-pass retro-reflection-cavity-enhanced PAS with an amplified laser source improved the sensor performance significantly. If an appropriate cavity design with increasing reflection times is used, the MDL of such a PAS-based sensor can be further improved.

[1]  M. Razeghi,et al.  QEPAS based ppb-level detection of CO and N2O using a high power CW DFB-QCL. , 2013, Optics express.

[2]  S. Trushin,et al.  Highly sensitive 13C16O2-laser photoacoustic detection of ammonia, phosphine and arsine in air , 1993 .

[3]  B. Lendl,et al.  Cantilever-enhanced photoacoustic detection of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) using NIR telecom laser sources near 1.6 µm , 2016, Applied Physics B.

[4]  M. Semtsiv,et al.  Intracavity photoacoustic sensing of water vapor with a continuously tunable external-cavity quantum-cascade laser operating near 5.5  μm. , 2016, Optics letters.

[5]  P. Hess,et al.  Intracavity photoacoustic resonance spectroscopy of C2H4 , 1987 .

[6]  Vincenzo Spagnolo,et al.  Photoacoustic Techniques for Trace Gas Sensing Based on Semiconductor Laser Sources , 2009, Sensors.

[7]  Frank K. Tittel,et al.  Ultra-high sensitive acetylene detection using quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy with a fiber amplified diode laser and a 30.72 kHz quartz tuning fork , 2017 .

[8]  Frank K. Tittel,et al.  Compact all-fiber quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy sensor with a 30.72 kHz quartz tuning fork and spatially resolved trace gas detection , 2016 .

[9]  Weijun Zhang,et al.  Multi-resonator photoacoustic spectroscopy , 2017 .

[10]  I. Cotton,et al.  Dissolved gas analysis of alternative fluids for power transformers , 2007, IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine.

[11]  Huadan Zheng,et al.  Sub-ppb nitrogen dioxide detection with a large linear dynamic range by use of a differential photoacoustic cell and a 3.5 W blue multimode diode laser , 2017 .

[12]  D. K. Schwartz,et al.  Selective acetylene detection through surface modification of metal–insulator–semiconductor sensors with alkanethiolate monolayers , 2009 .

[13]  L. Voesenek,et al.  Sensitive intracavity photoacoustic measurements with a CO2 waveguide laser , 1990 .

[14]  Masataka Nakazawa,et al.  Efficient Er3+‐doped optical fiber amplifier pumped by a 1.48 μm InGaAsP laser diode , 1989 .

[15]  G. Nagy,et al.  Intracavity photoacoustic gas detection with an external cavity diode laser , 1996 .

[16]  S.A. Boggs,et al.  Partial Discharge Pulse Propagation in Shielded Power Cable and Implications for Detection Sensitivity , 2007, IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine.

[17]  Jun Chang,et al.  Fiber-ring laser-based intracavity photoacoustic spectroscopy for trace gas sensing. , 2017, Optics letters.

[18]  J. Will Medlin,et al.  Experimental and modeling studies of acetylene detection in hydrogen/acetylene mixtures on PdM bimetallic metal–insulator–semiconductor devices , 2011 .

[19]  Zhiwei Sun,et al.  Quantitative C2H2 measurements in sooty flames using mid-infrared polarization spectroscopy , 2010 .

[20]  Gang Li,et al.  The HITRAN 2008 molecular spectroscopic database , 2005 .

[21]  Alexander Graham Bell,et al.  Upon the production and reproduction of sound by light , 1880 .

[22]  Jyrki Kauppinen,et al.  Optimization of a Microphone for Photoacoustic Spectroscopy , 2003, Applied spectroscopy.

[23]  Ming C. Wu,et al.  A 970 nm strained‐layer InGaAs/GaAlAs quantum well laser for pumping an erbium‐doped optical fiber amplifier , 1990 .