LITES-Based Sensitive CO2 Detection Using 2 μm Diode Laser and Self-Designed 9.5 kHz Quartz Tuning Fork.

A carbon dioxide (CO2) sensor based on light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES) using a 2 μm diode laser and a self-designed low-frequency trapezoidal-head QTF is reported for the first time in this invited paper. The self-designed trapezoidal-head QTF with a low resonant frequency of 9464.18 Hz and a high quality factor (Q) of 12,133.56 can significantly increase the accumulation time and signal level of the CO2-LITES sensor. A continuous-wave (CW) distributed-feedback (DFB) diode laser is used as the light source, and the strongest absorption line of CO2 located at 2004.01 nm is chosen. A comparison between the standard commercial QTF with the resonant frequency of 32.768 kHz and the self-designed trapezoidal-head QTF is performed. The experimental results show that the CO2-LITES sensor with the self-designed trapezoidal-head QTF has an excellent linear response to CO2 concentration, and its minimum detection limit (MDL) can reach 46.08 ppm (parts per million). When the average time is increased to 100 s based on the Allan variance analysis, the MDL of the sensor can be improved to 3.59 ppm. Compared with the 16.85 ppm of the CO2-LITES sensor with the commercial QTF, the performance is improved by 4.7 times, demonstrating the superiority of the self-designed trapezoidal-head QTF.