Optical system based on a CCD camera for ethanol detection

This work reports the optimization of an optical system used to detect and quantify volatile organic compounds (VOC). The sensor consisted of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) sensing film deposited on a glass substrate by the spin-coating technique. The PDMS has the property of swelling and/or changing its refractive index when it interacts with molecules of VOC in vapor phase. In order to measure the PDMS swelling, a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera was employed to evaluate the interference fringe shift in a Pohl interferometric arrangement. With this approach, it is possible to use each pixel of the CCD camera as a single photodetector in the arrangement. Similarly, different computer algorithms were developed in order to acquire and process the obtained data. The improvements in the system allowed the acquisition and plot of 1 datum per second. The steady-state responses of the PDMS sensors in the presence of ethanol vapor were analyzed. The obtained results showed that noise level was reduced approximately three times after performing data processing.