Dual-tube MEMS-based spectrophone for sub-ppb mid-IR photoacoustic gas detection

Nowadays, the scientific community and industry are increasingly pressed to provide solutions for developing compact and highly-performing trace-gas sensors for several applications of crucial importance, such as environmental monitoring or medical diagnostics. In this context, this work describes a novel configuration, making use of a mid-IR spectrophone combining the compactness of a photo-acoustic setup, a non-conventional micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) acousto-to-voltage transducer, and the sensitivity enhancement given by a cost-effective and easy-to-build dual-tube resonator configuration. In the optimal condition of sample pressure, the system developed in this work can achieve a minimum detection limit (MDL) equal to 0.34 ppb when averaging up to 10 s. Compared with previous literature of single-pass photoacoustic-based sensors for N2O, this corresponds to a significant improvement both for the achieved normalized noise equivalent absorption coefficient (NNEA) equal to 1.41 × 10−9 cm−1WHz−1/2, and for a Noise-Equivalent-Concentration (NEC) of 1 ppb obtained at 1 s of averaging time.