sub-nanoliter spectroscopic gas sensorsub-nanoliter光谱气体传感器.pdfVIP

Sensors 2006, 6, 1308-1320 sensors ISSN 1424-8220 © 2006 by MDPI /sensors Full Paper Sub-Nanoliter Spectroscopic Gas Sensor Bassam Alfeeli *, Gary Pickrell and Anbo Wang Center for Photonics Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 460 Turner Street, Suite 303, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA. E-mails: alfeeli@, pickrell@, awang@ Home page: /~photonics * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Received: 31 August 2006 / Accepted: 9 October 2006 / Published: 11 October 2006 Abstract: In this work, a new type of optical fiber based chemical sensor, the sub-nanoliter sample cell (SNSC) based gas sensor, is described and compared to existing sensors designs in the literature. This novel SNSC gas sensor is shown to have the capability of gas detection with a cell volume in the sub-nanoliter range. Experimental results for various configurations of the sensor design are presented which demonstrate the capabilities of the miniature gas sensor. Keywords: Chemical sensing, Optical sensing, Optical fiber, Miniature gas sensor. 1. Introduction Medicine, law enforcement, national security, environmental compliance and industrial processes monitoring and control are among the large number of applications that require chemical sensing capabilities. These applications require sensitive, non-destructive, rapid detection and quantification of the chemicals of interest [1]. Most chemical sensing methods are expensive, time consuming, and