All-fiber-coupled mid-infrared quartz-enhanced photoacoustic sensors

Infrared laser-based gas sensors are mature to take the leap from laboratory prototype to outdoor operation. Considering the demand of high robustness and compactness, the reliability of the optical alignment in a sensor is the top priority. This paper proposes a solution designing an optical system embedded within a sealed metallic cylinder containing an aspheric micro-lens to couple a single-mode interband cascade laser with an indium fluoride glass fiber. The fiber output is plug & play connected to an acoustic detection module of a quartz-enhanced photoacoustic sensor (QEPAS) equipped with a fiber port, avoiding the use of any free-space optics, from the source to the detection module. To demonstrate the operability, three all-fiber-coupled QEPAS sensors were realized for detection of CH4, CO2 and NO reaching sub-ppm ultimate detection limits with a signal integration time of 100 ms.