Publication Date:
2018-06-28
Description:
Sensors, Vol. 18, Pages 2047: Quartz-Enhanced Photoacoustic Spectroscopy Sensor with a Small-Gap Quartz Tuning Fork Sensors doi: 10.3390/s18072047 Authors: Yu-Fei Ma Yao Tong Ying He Jin-Hu Long Xin Yu A highly sensitive quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) sensor based on a custom quartz tuning fork (QTF) with a small-gap of 200 μm was demonstrated. With the help of the finite element modeling (FEM) simulation software COMSOL, the change tendency of the QEPAS signal under the influence of the laser beam vertical position and the length of the micro-resonator (mR) were calculated theoretically. Water vapor (H2O) was selected as the target analyte. The experimental results agreed well with those of the simulation, which verified the correctness of the theoretical model. An 11-fold signal enhancement was achieved with the addition of an mR with an optimal length of 5 mm in comparison to the bare QTF. Finally, the H2O-QEPAS sensor, which was based on a small-gap QTF, achieved a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 1.3 ppm, indicating an improvement of the sensor performance when compared to the standard QTF that has a gap of 300 μm.
Electronic ISSN:
1424-8220
Topics:
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
