Development of Compact Electronics for QEPAS Sensors.

Area of Science:

• Gas sensing technologies
• Spectroscopy
• Acoustic sensing

Background:

• Quartz-Enhanced Photoacoustic Spectroscopy (QEPAS) offers high sensitivity and selectivity for gas detection.
• Current QEPAS systems are often limited by bulky and expensive electronic components, hindering portable applications like drone integration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop compact and cost-effective electronic modules for QEPAS sensors.
• To overcome the size and cost limitations of existing QEPAS instrumentation.

Main Methods:

• Designed and realized a low-noise, fully differential preamplifier with digital output and programmable gain for the quartz tuning fork.
• Integrated a compact FPGA board featuring a laser modulation signal generator and a CORDIC-algorithm-based lock-in amplifier.

Main Results:

• Successfully developed and tested compact electronic modules for QEPAS.
• Demonstrated the functionality of the developed electronics for detecting H2O and CO2 in ambient air using QEPAS sensors.

Conclusions:

• The developed compact electronics enable portable and cost-effective QEPAS applications.
• This advancement significantly broadens the potential applications of QEPAS technology, including on-board drone systems.