A Miniaturized QEPAS Trace Gas Sensor with a 3D-Printed Acoustic Detection Module

Xiaotao Yang; Youhong Xiao; Yufei Ma; Ying He; Frank K Tittel

doi:10.3390/s17081750

A Miniaturized QEPAS Trace Gas Sensor with a 3D-Printed Acoustic Detection Module

Sensors (Basel). 2017 Jul 31;17(8):1750. doi: 10.3390/s17081750.

Authors

Xiaotao Yang¹, Youhong Xiao², Yufei Ma³, Ying He⁴, Frank K Tittel⁵

Affiliations

¹ College of Power and Energy Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China. yangxiaotao@hrbeu.edu.cn.
² College of Power and Energy Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China. xiaoyouhong@hrbeu.edu.cn.
³ National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Tunable Laser, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. mayufei@hit.edu.cn.
⁴ National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Tunable Laser, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. hearkenyi@hit.edu.cn.
⁵ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX 77005, USA. fkt@rice.edu.

Abstract

A 3D printing technique was introduced to a quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) sensor and is reported for the first time. The acoustic detection module (ADM) was designed and fabricated using the 3D printing technique and the ADM volume was compressed significantly. Furthermore, a small grin lens was used for laser focusing and facilitated the beam adjustment in the 3D-printed ADM. A quartz tuning fork (QTF) with a low resonance frequency of 30.72 kHz was used as the acoustic wave transducer and acetylene (C₂H₂) was chosen as the analyte. The reported miniaturized QEPAS trace gas sensor is useful in actual sensor applications.

Keywords: 3D printing; C2H2 quantification; QEPAS; miniaturization.