Ultra-highly sensitive HCl-LITES sensor based on a low-frequency quartz tuning fork and a fiber-coupled multi-pass cell

In this paper, an ultra-highly sensitive light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES) based hydrogen chloride (HCl) sensor, exploiting a custom low-frequency quartz tuning fork (QTF) and a fiber-coupled multi-pass cell (MPC) with optical length of 40 m, was demonstrated. A low resonant frequency of 2.89 kHz of QTF is advantageous to produce a long energy accumulation time in LITES. Furthermore, the use of an MPC with the fibercoupled structure not only avoids the difficulty in optical alignment but also enhances the system robustness. A distributed feedback (DFB) diode laser emitting at 1.74 mu m was used as the excitation source. Under the same operating conditions, the using of low-frequency QTF provided a similar to 2 times signal improvement compared to that achieved using a standard 32 kHz QTF. At an integration time of 200 ms, a minimum detection limit (MDL) of 148 ppb was achieved. The reported sensor also shows an excellent linear response to HCl gas concentration in the investigated range.

Automated summary

In this paper, an ultra-highly sensitive light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES) based HCl sensor using a custom low-frequency QTF and a fiber-coupled MPC was demonstrated. The results showed that the low-frequency QTF provided improved signal enhancement compared to a standard QTF, and the fiber-coupled MPC enhanced system robustness. The sensor exhibited an excellent linear response to HCl gas concentration.