Pressure-dependent sensitivity of a single-pass methane detection system using a continuous-wave distributed feedback laser at 3270 nm

摘要

A single-pass, compact, and low-power-consumption methane sensing system is presented, and its sensitivity is examined for a set of reference cells with pressures of 7.4, 74, and 740 Torr and the same methane concentration at laboratory temperature of 23 degrees C. A GaSb-based continuous-wave distributed feedback tunable diode laser at 3270 nm and wavelength modulation spectroscopy were employed to collect 2f spectra in the nu(3), R-3 band of (CH4)-C-12. The collected 2f spectra were fitted to a modulated Voigt line profile model. An Allan-Werle variance analysis shows that the best detectivity, 4 ppbm, is obtained for the highest pressure cell. At pressures of 74 and 7.4 Torr the detectivities are 16 and 28 ppbm, respectively. For these low-pressure cells, further sensitivity improvements were achieved using a large modulation depth (m > 2.2) at the expense of spectral resolution. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America