Lithium Niobate - Enhanced Photoacoustic Spectroscopy

Aldo F P Cantatore; Giansergio Menduni; Andrea Zifarelli; Pietro Patimisco; Miguel Gonzalez; Huseyin R Seren; Vincenzo Spagnolo; Angelo Sampaolo

doi:10.1016/j.pacs.2023.100577

Lithium Niobate - Enhanced Photoacoustic Spectroscopy

Photoacoustics. 2023 Nov 30:35:100577. doi: 10.1016/j.pacs.2023.100577. eCollection 2024 Feb.

Authors

Aldo F P Cantatore¹, Giansergio Menduni¹, Andrea Zifarelli¹, Pietro Patimisco^{1

2}, Miguel Gonzalez³, Huseyin R Seren³, Vincenzo Spagnolo^{1

2}, Angelo Sampaolo^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ PolySense Lab, Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica, University and Politecnico of Bari, Via Amendola 173, Bari 70126, Italy.
² PolySense Innovations srl, Via Amendola 173, Bari 70126, Italy.
³ Aramco Services Company, 17155 Park Row, Houston, TX 77084, USA.

Abstract

In this work, we report on the novel employment of lithium niobate tuning forks as acoustic transducers in photoacoustic spectroscopy for gas sensing. The lithium niobate tuning fork (LiNTF) exhibits a fundamental resonance frequency of 39196.6 Hz and a quality factor Q = 5900 at atmospheric pressure. The possibility to operate the LiNTF as a photoacoustic wave detector was demonstrated targeting a water vapor absorption line falling at 7181.14 cm^-1 (1.39 µm). A noise equivalent concentration of 2 ppm was reached with a signal integration time of 20 s. These preliminary results open the path towards integrated photonic devices for gas sensing with LiNTF-based detectors on lithium niobate platforms.

Keywords: High quality factors resonators; Integrated photonic devices for gas sensing; LiNPAS; LiNTF; Lithium niobate forks; Lithium niobate-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy; Measurement of fluid properties; QEPAS.