Characteristics and Temperature Compensation of Non-Dispersive Infrared (NDIR) Alcohol Gas Sensors According to Incident Light Intensity

This paper discusses the output characteristics of the sensor response of infrared ethanol gas detectors based on incident radiation intensity. Sensors placed at each focal point of two elliptical waveguides were fabricated to yield two module combinations and to verify the output characteristics. A thin Parylene-C film was deposited onto the reflector surfaces of one module. The thermal properties were compared between the sensor (2.0 empty set) and sensor with a hollow disk (1.6 empty set), the disk being mounted at the end of one detector. The fabricated sensor modules were placed inside a gas chamber. The temperature was increased from 253 K to 333 K, over the concentration range from 0 to 500 ppm. As the temperature increases by 10 K, the output of sensor (2.0 empty set) without and with Parylene-C coating typically increased by 70 mV and 52 mV, respectively. However, the sensor output with the hollow disk showed an average decrement of 0.8 mV/50 ppm and 1 mV/50 ppm for module without and with Parylene-C deposition, respectively. For concentrations higher than 50 ppm, the estimation error was around +/- 5%. Further, the sensitivity to temperature variation and the absorbance of infrared (IR) reflection was found higher for Parylene-C coated module.