Publications

Development of MEMS photoacoustic spectroscopy

Eichenfield, Matthew S.; Givler, R.C.; Pfeifer, Kent B.; Reinke, Charles M.; Robinson, Alex L.; Resnick, Paul J.; Griffin, Benjamin G.; Langlois, Eric L.; Nielson, Gregory N.; Okandan, Murat O.

After years in the field, many materials suffer degradation, off-gassing, and chemical changes causing build-up of measurable chemical atmospheres. Stand-alone embedded chemical sensors are typically limited in specificity, require electrical lines, and/or calibration drift makes data reliability questionable. Along with size, these "Achilles' heels" have prevented incorporation of gas sensing into sealed, hazardous locations which would highly benefit from in-situ analysis. We report on development of an all-optical, mid-IR, fiber-optic based MEMS Photoacoustic Spectroscopy solution to address these limitations. Concurrent modeling and computational simulation are used to guide hardware design and implementation.