Photothermal gas sensing with a custom-made, fiber-coupled Fabry–Pérot etalon

Growing awareness of the adverse health effects of air pollution has increased the demand for reliable, sensitive, and mass-producible sensor systems. Photothermal interferometry has shown great promise for sensitive, selective, and miniaturized gas sensing solutions. This work describes the development of a macroscopic photothermal sensor system with a sensor head consisting of a low-cost, custom-made, and fiber-coupled Fabry–Pérot etalon. The sensor was tested with NO2, achieving a 3σ limit of detection (LOD) of approximately 370 ppbv (1 s). Exhibiting little drift, a LOD of 15 ppbv is achievable for 200 s integration time. Compensating for the excitation power, the normalized noise equivalent absorption was calculated to be 1.4×10−8 cm−1WHz. The sensor system is not limited to NO2 but can be used for any gas or aerosol species by exchanging the excitation laser source.