Abstract:A detailed investigation of a set of custom quartz tuning forks (QTFs), operating in the fundamental and first overtone flexural modes is reported. Support losses are the dominant energy dissipation processes when the QTFs vibrate at the first overtone mode. These losses can be decreased by increasing the ratio between the prong length and its thickness. The QTFs were implemented in a quartz enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) based sensor operating in the near-IR spectral range and water vapor was selected as the gas target. QTF flexural modes having the highest quality factor exhibit the largest QEPAS signal, demonstrating that, by optimizing the QTF prongs sizes, overtone modes can provide a higher QEPAS sensor performance with respect to using the fundamental mode.

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FIG. 4. QEPAS spectral scans of a gas mixture containing air with a 1.7% water concentration at a pressure of 75 Torr for the fundamental mode (black solid line) and for the first overtone mode (red solid line), acquired at the optimum laser modulation depth and focusing point conditions. Both scans were recorded with a 100 ms lock-in integration time and normalized to the overtone peak value. The overtone peak signal corresponds to 2.65 mV.

A phenomenon which is usually considered as the main disadvantage of photoacoustic Helmholtz cells is photoacoustic background signal resulting from the light absorption by the cell windows. Although there are methods which reduce this background signal, e.g. light wavelength modulation or time domain filtering of the photoacoustic response from the sample, the methods are limited to particular applications, and none of them would completely remove the mentioned background signal. The paper presents design of a windowless open photoacoustic Helmholtz cell, and preliminary results of frequency response measurements of such a cell. Removal of the windows eliminated the main source of the photoacoustic background signal. Additionally, the proposed design allows for unrestricted or forced flow of the fluid filling the cell. As a result, the cell can be easily adapted for continuous, real-time photoacoustic measurements. Under proper selection of the cell dimensions, Q-factors of such open photoacoustic Helmholtz resonators are comparable to the Q-factors of corresponding closed Helmholtz cells.