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Multi-species trace gas sensing with dual-wavelength QCLs

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Abstract

Instrumentation for environmental monitoring of gaseous pollutants and greenhouse gases tends to be complex, expensive, and energy demanding, because every compound measured relies on a specific analytical technique. This work demonstrates an alternative approach based on mid-infrared laser absorption spectroscopy with dual-wavelength quantum cascade lasers (QCLs). The combination of two dual- and one single-DFB QCL yields high-precision measurements of CO (0.08 ppb), CO2 (100 ppb), NH3 (0.02 ppb), NO (0.4 ppb), NO2 (0.1 ppb), N2O (0.045 ppb), and O3 (0.11 ppb) simultaneously in a compact setup (45 × 45 cm2). The lasers are driven time-multiplexed in intermittent continuous wave mode with a repetition rate of 1 kHz. The individual spectra are real-time averaged (1 s) by an FPGA-based data acquisition system. The instrument was assessed for environmental monitoring and benchmarked with reference instrumentation to demonstrate its potential for compact multi-species trace gas sensing.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by nano-tera.ch/IrSens II and the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) through “Umwelttechnologieförderung”. We thank the NABEL team for providing the data from the monitoring station in Dübendorf and for supplying the reference gases. The continuous support of Beat Schwarzenbach (Empa) with O3 calibrations and NO x measurements was indispensable for this work. Christoph Zellweger (Empa) is acknowledged for providing the calibrated reference gas cylinder.

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Author notes

  1. P. Morten Hundt

    Present address: MIRO Analytical Technologies GmbH, 8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Empa-Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Air Pollution and Environmental Technology, 8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    P. Morten Hundt, Béla Tuzson, Oleg Aseev, Chang Liu, Philipp Scheidegger, Herbert Looser & Lukas Emmenegger

  2. ETH Zurich, Quantum Optoelectronics Group, 8093, Zurich, Switzerland

    Filippos Kapsalidis, Mehran Shahmohammadi & Jérôme Faist

  3. FHNW, Institute for Aerosol and Sensor Technology, 5210, Windisch, Switzerland

    Herbert Looser

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  1. P. Morten Hundt
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Correspondence to P. Morten Hundt.

Additional information

This article is part of the topical collection “Mid-infrared and THz Laser Sources and Applications” guest edited by Wei Ren, Paolo De Natale and Gerard Wysocki.

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Hundt, P.M., Tuzson, B., Aseev, O. et al. Multi-species trace gas sensing with dual-wavelength QCLs. Appl. Phys. B 124, 108 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-018-6977-y

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