Trace-gas Spectroscopy of Methane on a Silicon Photonic Chip [electronic resource]

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Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Online Access (via OSTI)
Format: Government Document Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. : Oak Ridge, Tenn. : United States. Department of Energy. ; distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Department of Energy, 2017.
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Abstract:Recent advances in hybrid integrated silicon photonic (SiPh) technologies are enabling the migration of conventional free-space optical spectroscopic sensors onto a compact on-chip platform [1-3]. In addition to the small spatial footprint and power efficiency, we envision such sensors to be scalably manufactured using existing CMOS-compatible foundry processes, thus providing disruptive SWaP-C (size, weight, power, and cost) benefits in contrast to commercially available optical sensors. Initial demonstration of evanescent TDLAS (tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy) of methane (CH4) on a passive SiPh waveguide has indicated minimum fractional absorption of (αL)min = 3.3×10-5 Hz-1/2, which is on-par with state-of-art open-path TDLAS sensor systems [4]. Given the general recent movement toward cleaner fuels, CH4 fugitive emissions monitoring is of significant interest given the extremely high radiative forcing potential [5]. For a nominal waveguide length of 30 cm with Γ = 25 % evanescent exposure, this corresponds to ̃ 10 ppmv detection sensitivity at 1 s integration time, and further sensitivity enhancement is expected with even longer waveguides, as the laser RIN typically dominates our measurements at nominal waveguide lengths. Despite the excellent sensitivities for short-term integration periods, long-term measurements (> 10 s) are potentially limited on a silicon platform due to the high material thermo-optic coefficient, resulting in significant susceptibility of Fabry-Perot etalons to drift in the presence of even small (̃ 1 mK) thermal fluctuations. To this end, customized spectral fitting algorithms have played a significant role in both fringe drift mitigation and peak detection fidelity (e.g. in the presence of a passing CH4 plume), which are crucial for enhancing long-term stability without the need for frequent sensor recalibration. A variety of spectral algorithms have been designed for this purpose, and details will be presented at the meeting.
Item Description:Published through SciTech Connect.
09/05/2017.
"doe-ibm-0000540-12"
EMN Meeting on Photonics, Budapest, Hungary, September 2017.
Eric Zhang; Chi Xiong; Yves Martin; Jason Orcutt; Marwan Khater; Laurent Schares; Tymon Barwicz; Cheyenne Teng; Gerard Wysocki; William Green.
IBM, Yorktown Heights, NY (United States). Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
Physical Description:SF2H.1 : digital, PDF file.