Recent advances in quartz enhanced photoacoustic sensing

Conductometric semiconducting metal oxide gas sensors have been widely used and investigated in the detection of gases. Investigations have indicated that the gas sensing process is strongly related to surface reactions, so one of the important parameters of gas sensors, the sensitivity of the metal oxide based materials, will change with the factors influencing the surface reactions, such as chemical components, surface-modification and microstructures of sensing layers, temperature and humidity. In this brief review, attention will be focused on changes of sensitivity of conductometric semiconducting metal oxide gas sensors due to the five factors mentioned above.

A new approach to detecting a weak photoacoustic signal in a gas medium is described. Instead of a gas-filled resonant acoustic cavity, the sound energy is accumulated in a high- Q crystal element. Feasibility experiments utilizing a quartz-watch tuning fork demonstrate a sensitivity of 1.2x10(-7) cm(-1) W/ radicalHz . Potential further developments and applications of this technique are discussed.