High-Sensitivity Silicon Cantilever-Enhanced Photoacoustic Spectroscopy Analyzer with Low Gas Consumption.

Abstract

A silicon cantilever-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS)-based trace gas analyzer with low gas consumption is presented. A silicon cantilever-based fiber-optic Fabry-Perot (F-P) interferometric acoustic sensor with a compact structure and high sensitivity is designed for photoacoustic signal detection. The non-resonant photoacoustic cell (PAC) is a cylindrical copper tube with a volume of 0.56 mL. A near-infrared laser with a center wavelength of 1532.83 nm amplified using an erbium-doped fiber application amplifier is used as the excitation light. The wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) technique is employed in the present work for second-harmonic photoacoustic signal detection. The experimental results show that the minimum detection limit of C2H2 is 199.8 parts per trillion (ppt) with an average time of 60 s. The normalized noise equivalent absorption coefficient is calculated as 1.72 × 10-9 cm-1 W/Hz1/2. Furthermore, the proposed silicon cantilever-enhanced non-resonant PAS-based gas analyzer can not only analyze the gas concentration in a closed small-capacity PAC with low gas consumption but also detect target gas leakage in real time at a long distance.