Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 8, 2026

Infrared Degenerate Four-wave Mixing with Upconversion Detection for Quantitative Gas Sensing
Published on: March 22, 2019
Simultaneous Detection of 12CH4, 13CH4, and Related Isotope Ratio Exploiting a Frequency-Multiplexed Mid-Infrared
Mariagrazia Olivieri1, Arianna Elefante2, Giansergio Menduni1
1Polysense Lab, Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica, University and Politecnico of Bari, Via Amendola 173, Bari 70126, Italy.
None:
We report the development of a dual-gas Quartz-Enhanced Photoacoustic Spectroscopy (QEPAS) sensor operating in the mid-infrared range for the simultaneous detection of 12CH4 and 13CH4. The sensor employs a frequency-modulated multiplexing scheme using two distributed-feedback quantum cascade lasers to independently excite the fundamental (fo) and overtone (f1) vibrational modes of a quartz tuning fork coupled with resonator tubes. The f0-demodulated signal is dedicated to monitoring 12CH4, while the f1-demodulated signal selectively quantifies 13CH4, enabling the analysis of the isotopic composition of methane samples. Calibration measurements demonstrated a linear response of the QEPAS signal to varying 13CH4 concentrations in CH4-based samples diluted in N2, with a precision of 1‰ in detecting isotopic delta ratio variations for 1% CH4 mixtures at 0.8 s integration time. The proposed system is suitable for real-time, high-precision isotopic methane sensing aimed at applications such as environmental monitoring, geochemical tracing, and industrial process control.
Related Concept Videos
Gas Chromatography: Types of Detectors-II
¹³C NMR: ¹H–¹³C Decoupling
A broadband decoupling technique is used to simplify these complex, sometimes overlapping, signals. Broadband decoupling relies on a...
Mass Analyzers: Common Types
Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy: Instrumentation
There are three main types of inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) instruments: sequential, simultaneous multichannel, and Fourier transform instruments, with the latter being less commonly used....
2D NMR: Heteronuclear Single-Quantum Correlation Spectroscopy (HSQC)
¹H NMR Signal Integration: Overview

