A light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy using surface mounted device quartz tuning fork

This paper reported on a system for the detection of trace acetylene (C₂H₂) gas utilizing a surface mounted device quartz tuning fork (SMD QTF) in conjunction with light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES) and provided a comparative analysis against a conventional plug-in quartz tuning fork (P-QTF). The SMD QTF is a cost-effective standard instrument featuring a transparent glass shell and smaller size, which eliminates the need for stripping shell in LITES and effectively mitigates oxidation of the QTF as well as drift in resonance frequency. The SMD QTF has almost 2-4 times more Q factor than the conventional bare P-QTF. Experiments demonstrated that the signal amplitude of the SMD-QTF was almost 9 times higher than that of the conventional bare P-QTF. Minimum detection limits (MDLs) of 68.11 ppb@220 s (P-QTF) and 40.39 ppb@200 s (Larger SMD QTF) were obtained for both under the same experimental conditions.