Quartz tuning forks resonance frequency matching for laser spectroscopy sensing

In this paper, we report on the performance of quartz tuning fork (QTF) based laser spectroscopy sensing employing multiple QTFs. To avoid that resonance frequency mismatching of the QTFs degrades the sensor performance, two types of resonance frequency matching method are here proposed. A system based on the coupling of two sensing modules, one based on quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) and one on light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES) technique, was realized to validate the proposed methods. Each module employed a different QTF (QTF1 and QTF2, respectively). Operating temperature or pressure of QTF2 were regulated to match the resonance frequency of QTF1, which operated at 25.0 °C and atmospheric pressure. Without regulation, the difference between QTF1 and QTF2 resonance frequencies was 2.42 Hz and the superposition coefficient η was only 54.7%. When the temperature regulation was carried out, at a QTF2 operating temperature of 67.5 °C, an optimal η value of 95.0% was obtained. For the pressure regulation approach, if operating QTF2 at pressure of 500 Torr, η reached a value of 97.2%. The obtained results show that the proposed two methods are effective in resonance frequency matching of QTFs for gas sensing systems.