Potential applications for miniaturized cells
Our experiments testify a great potential for practical application of the miniaturized resonant photoacoustic cells for detection of small gas leaks.
Possible ways for application of developed miniaturized resonant photoacoustic cells are:
- With the help of our cells the leak detection sensitivity will be increased 103 – 106
times compared to the non-miniaturized approaches
and more than 100 times in relation to the commercial mass-spectrometer-based leak-detection systems.
In contrast to the systems, the ultrasonic PA leak detector needs no expensive vacuum chambers
and can be applied to in situ localization of leak for a large number of substances to be emitted
in atmospheric air. Possible areas of the photoacoustic leak detector application
are the automobile industry (testing of fuel systems, aluminum wheels, air suspension systems, airbag inflators, air conditioning systems),
the HVAC Technology (evaporators, compressors, condensers, accumulators, hoses, valves),
the Vacuum and Over Pressure Technology
(armatures, fitting, fire extinguishing systems, tanks) and the Packaging Technology
(packing for pharmaceutical products and grocery items).
A preliminary estimation show that the ultrasonic gas-leak PA detector on the basis of
a compact RF waveguide CO2-laser compares with the
best commercial halogen leak-detecting devices in the cost (no more than ~$30000) and the sizes
(the weight is a few kilograms). The estimated detector is expected to outperform significantly
the existing devices in the sensitivity.
- An infrared-laser-based photoacoustic gas analyzer can be used in order
to sense explosive substances in airports and railway stations or to localize
a tightness imperfection for the tubing with extremely toxic compounds (stibin, diboran,
phosgen, phosphin, arsin) in semiconductor plants.
- The approach is expected to find the application in Life Sciences
(entomology, microbiology, cell biology, biochemistry etc.)
focused into the metabolic processes occurring in small-scale biological samples:
small animals and plants, their organs, tissue pieces
or microscopic objects down to individual cells. Combining the high sensitivity
inherent in the traditional PA-approaches with an ability
to probe the gas inside such a small-sized PA cell gives a possibility
to analyze chemical compounds to be emitted by individual small-sized
objects with an extremely low emission rate. A crude estimation shows
that the application of the approach can provide detecting the gas leak
emitted by an object with the rate down to ~10-14 cm3/s for C2H4 or
~ 10-10 cm3/s for CO2. For comparison, in the aerobic reaction
an individual cell of living organism emits CO2 with a rate from
10-10 to 10-9 cm3/s. In the photosynthesis reaction
an individual cell of plant can absorb CO2 at a rate higher than 10-8 cm3/s.
- The ultrasonic PA detector can be considered as a material-economy tool
for analyzing the chemicals in nanochemistry and other nanotechnology applications,
which operate with the smallest amounts of substances.
- The proposed approach is a promising line in order to create compact models (for instance, ‘pocket-sized’)
of the high-sensitivity laser photoacoustic gas-leak analyzer. The developed cells facilitate essentially the creation
of integrated systems (so-called MPAS: micro-photo-acoustic systems), which will include the miniaturized laser
(near-infrared single-mode laser diodes, mid- or far-infrared quantum cascade lasers) and our photoacoustic cell.
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