Abstract
A simple and effective wavelength calibration scheme is proposed in a quartz enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) system for trace gas detection. A reference gas cell is connected an InGaAs photodetector for detecting the absorption intensity peak caused by the gas to calibrate the gas absorption center using distributed feedback laser diode (DFB-LD) with sawtooth wave driver current. The gas absorption wavelength calibration and gas sensing operations are conducted at a special internal to eliminate the wavelength shift of DFB-LD caused by the ambient fluctuations. Compared with the conventional wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS), this method uses a lower lock-in amplifier bandwidth and averaging algorithm to improve signal noise ratio (SNR). Water vapor is chosen as a sample gas to evaluate its performance. In the experiments, the impact of sawtooth wave frequency and lock-in amplifier bandwidth on the harmonic signal is analyzed, and the wavelength-calibration technique-based system achieves a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 790 ppbv and SNR with 13.4 improvement factor compared with the conventional WMS system.
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Acknowledgment
This work was supported by Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Liaocheng University (Grant No. 318051543) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61475085).
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Wang, Z., Chang, J., Liu, Q. et al. Gas Absorption Center-Based Wavelength Calibration Technique in QEPAS System for SNR Improvement. Photonic Sens 8, 358–366 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13320-018-0502-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13320-018-0502-0