A MEMS-Enabled Deployable Trace Chemical Sensor Based on Fast Gas-Chromatography and Quartz Enhanced Photoacousic Spectoscopy

Publication date: 24 Dic 2019

JournalSource: OPENALEXOpenAlex type: articleOpen Access
Authors: Stefano Zampolli, Sandro Mengali, Nicola Liberatore, Ivan Elmi, Luca Masini, Michele Sanmartin, Roberto Viola

This paper reports on a portable selective chemical sensor for hazardous vapors at trace levels, which combines a two-stage purge and trap vapor pre-concentration system, a Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) based fast gas-chromatographic (FAST-GC) separation column and a miniaturized quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) detector. The integrated sensing system provides two-dimensional selectivity combining GC retention time and QEPAS spectral information, and was specifically designed to be rugged and suitable to be deployed on unmanned robotic ground vehicles. This is the first demonstration of a miniaturized QEPAS device used as spectroscopic detector downstream of a FAST-GC separation column, enabling real-world analyses in dirty environments with response time of a few minutes. The main modules of the GC/QEPAS sensor device will be described in detail together with the system integration, and successful test results will be reported and discussed.

Origin
Sensors
Volume
20
Issue
1
Pages
120
Cited by
14