A novel tapered quartz tuning fork-based laser spectroscopy sensing

A novel tapered quartz tuning fork (QTF) was designed to enhance its stress magnitude and charge distribution in QTF-based laser spectroscopy, which had a low resonant frequency of 7.83 kHz and a wide fork gap for long energy accumulation time and easy optical alignment. Compared to the reported rectangular QTF, this tapered QTF transfers the maximum stress position from the root to the middle to improve its sensing performance. Furthermore, the unique design eliminates the 90° right angles typically found in standard QTFs, which often lead to undesired “webs” and “facets” during the etching process. This design minimizes performance degradation by reducing the presence of residual unexpected materials. QTF-based laser spectroscopy of quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) and light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES) were adopted to verify its performance. Compared with the widely used standard QTF, the total surface charge of the tapered QTF was improved 5.08 times and 5.69 times in QEPAS and LITES simulations, respectively. Experiments revealed that this tapered QTF-based QEPAS sensor had a 3.02 times improvement in signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) compared to the standard QTF-based system. Adding an acoustic micro-resonator to this tapered QTF-based QEPAS sensor improved the signal level by 97.20 times. The minimum detection limit (MDL) for acetylene (C2H2) detection was determined to be 16.45 ppbv. In the LITES technique, compared to the standard QTF, this tapered QTF-based sensor had a 3.60 times improvement in SNR. The MDL for C2H2 detection was determined to be 146.39 ppbv.