Fiber loop ringdown (FLRD) utilizes an inexpensive telecommunications light source, a photodiode, and a section of single-mode fiber to form a uniform fiber optic sensor platform for sensing various ...quantities, such as pressure, temperature, strain, refractive index, chemical species, biological cells, and small volume of fluids. In FLRD, optical losses of a light pulse in a fiber loop induced by changes in a quantity are measured by the light decay time constants. FLRD measures time to detect a quantity; thus, FLRD is referred to as a time-domain sensing technique. FLRD sensors have near real-time response, multi-pass enhanced high-sensitivity, and relatively low cost (i.e., without using an optical spectral analyzer). During the last eight years since the introduction of the original form of fiber ringdown spectroscopy, there has been increasing interest in the FLRD technique in fiber optic sensor developments, and new application potential is being explored. This paper first discusses the challenging issues in development of multi-function, fiber optic sensors or sensor networks using current fiber optic sensor sensing schemes, and then gives a review on current fiber optic sensor development using FLRD technique. Finally, design perspectives on new generation, multi-function, fiber optic sensor platforms using FLRD technique are particularly presented.
Breath analysis, a promising new field of medicine and medical instrumentation, potentially offers noninvasive, real-time, and point-of-care (POC) disease diagnostics and metabolic status monitoring. ...Numerous breath biomarkers have been detected and quantified so far by using the GC-MS technique. Recent advances in laser spectroscopic techniques and laser sources have driven breath analysis to new heights, moving from laboratory research to commercial reality. Laser spectroscopic detection techniques not only have high-sensitivity and high-selectivity, as equivalently offered by the MS-based techniques, but also have the advantageous features of near real-time response, low instrument costs, and POC function. Of the approximately 35 established breath biomarkers, such as acetone, ammonia, carbon dioxide, ethane, methane, and nitric oxide, 14 species in exhaled human breath have been analyzed by high-sensitivity laser spectroscopic techniques, namely, tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS), cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS), integrated cavity output spectroscopy (ICOS), cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy (CEAS), cavity leak-out spectroscopy (CALOS), photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS), quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS), and optical frequency comb cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy (OFC-CEAS). Spectral fingerprints of the measured biomarkers span from the UV to the mid-IR spectral regions and the detection limits achieved by the laser techniques range from parts per million to parts per billion levels. Sensors using the laser spectroscopic techniques for a few breath biomarkers, e.g., carbon dioxide, nitric oxide, etc. are commercially available. This review presents an update on the latest developments in laser-based breath analysis.
Since the ancient discovery of the 'sweet odor' in human breath gas, pursuits of the breath analysis-based disease diagnostics have never stopped. Actually, the 'smell' of the breath, as one of three ...key disease diagnostic techniques, has been used in Eastern-Medicine for more than three thousand years. With advancement of measuring technologies in sensitivity and selectivity, more specific breath gas species have been identified and established as a biomarker of a particular disease. Acetone is one of the breath gases and its concentration in exhaled breath can now be determined with high accuracy using various techniques and methods. With the worldwide prevalence of diabetes that is typically diagnosed through blood testing, human desire to achieve non-blood based diabetic diagnostics and monitoring has never been quenched. Questions, such as is breath acetone a biomarker of diabetes and how is the breath acetone related to the blood glucose (BG) level (the golden criterion currently used in clinic for diabetes diagnostic, monitoring, and management), remain to be answered. A majority of current research efforts in breath acetone measurements and its technology developments focus on addressing the first question. The effort to tackle the second question has begun recently. The earliest breath acetone measurement in clearly defined diabetic patients was reported more than 60 years ago. For more than a half-century, as reviewed in this paper, there have been more than 41 independent studies of breath acetone using various techniques and methods, and more than 3211 human subjects, including 1581 healthy people, 242 Type 1 diabetic patients, 384 Type 2 diabetic patients, 174 unspecified diabetic patients, and 830 non-diabetic patients or healthy subjects who are under various physiological conditions, have been used in the studies. The results of the breath acetone measurements collected in this review support that many conditions might cause changes to breath acetone concentrations; however, the results from the six independent studies using clearly-defined Type 1 and Type 2 diabetic patients unanimously support that an elevated mean breath acetone concentration exists in Type 1 diabetes. Note that there is some overlap between the ranges of breath acetone concentration in individual T1D patients and healthy subjects; this reminds one to be careful when using an acetone breath test on T1D diagnostics. Comparatively, it is too early to draw a general conclusion on the relationship between a breath acetone level and a BG level from the very limited data in the literature.
As newer and more reliable ways of construction were developed, civilization began to spread out further and retain functional infrastructure for longer periods of time....
Acetone is qualitatively known as a biomarker of diabetes; however, the quantitative information on acetone concentration in diabetic breath is incomplete, and the knowledge of correlations of breath ...acetone with diabetic diagnostic parameters, namely, blood glucose (BG) and glycohemoglobin A1C (A1C), are unknown. We utilized a pilot-scale breath acetone analyzer based on the cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS) technique to conduct breath tests with 34 Type 1 diabetic (T1D), ten Type 2 diabetic (T2D) patients, and 15 apparently healthy individuals. Relations between breath acetone and BG, A1C, and several other bio indices, such as the type of diabetes, onset-time, gender, age, and weight were investigated. Our observations show that a linear correlation between the mean group acetone and the mean group BG level does exist (R = 0.98, P < 0.02) when all the T1D subjects tested are grouped by different BG levels, 40-100, 101-150, 151-200, and 201-419 mg/dL. Similarly, among the T1D subjects studied, when their A1C's are grouped by < 7, 7-9.9, and 10-13, a linear correlation between the mean group A1C and the mean group acetone concentration is observed (R = 0.98, P < 0.02). No strong correlations are observed when the BG and A1C numbers are not grouped. The mean breath acetone concentration in the T1D subjects studied in this work is determined to be 2.19 ppmv (parts per million by volume), which is higher than the mean breath acetone concentration, 0.48 ppmv, in the 15 healthy people tested.
We report a novel microwave plasma-assisted combustion (PAC) system that is developed as a new test platform to study roles of plasma in PAC. The system included two major components, an atmospheric ...pressure microwave plasma cavity and a cross-shape quartz combustor. This new PAC system allows one to study PAC using complicated yet well-controlled combinations of operating parameters, such as fuel equivalence ratio (ϕ), fuel mixture flow rate, plasma gas flow rate, plasma gases, symmetric or asymmetric fuel-oxidant injection patterns, with and without plasma. In this work, ignitions at the fuel (lean and rich) flammability limits at different plasma powers and fuel flow rates were investigated. The ignition curves of plasma power versus ϕFL at the different flow rates revealed a stretched U-shape, showing clear evidences of the plasma enhancement effects on ignition and flame stabilization, i.e. the fuel lean flammability limit (ϕLFL) was extended to ϕ=0.2, as compared to ϕ=0.6 at the same combustion parameters except with no plasma. Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) showed that the combustor had three distinct reaction zones: plasma zone, hybrid plasma-flame zone, and flame zone; and each of the reaction zones was well defined by its OES features. Furthermore, a detailed survey of OES of OH (A–X) conducted along the plasma jet axis (x direction) with a spatial resolution of 0.5mm revealed that OH(A) had a double-peak feature in its relative emission intensity curve (I∼x) in the hybrid zone where plasma-assisted ignition (PAI) started, as evidenced by a significant surge of OH(A) and by a large increase in OH rotational temperature, i.e. from 1450K to 2400K. Moving from the hybrid zone to the flame zone, OH(A) decreased by more than four orders of magnitude. However, the electronic ground state OH(X) measured simultaneously using pulsed cavity ringdown spectroscopy around 308nm showed that absolute number density of the OH(X) decreased by smaller than a factor of ten from the downstream of the hybrid zone to the flame zone. The different changing rates of the OH(A) and OH(X) radicals from the hybrid zone to the flame zone allow us to propose a hypothesis that if both the electronically excited state OH(A) and the electronic ground state OH(X) assisted the ignition and flame stabilization processes, the role of OH(X) radicals was more dominant in the flame stabilization but the role of OH(A) radicals was more dominant in the ignition enhancement.
Characterization, identification, and detection of aerosol particles in their native atmospheric states remain a challenge. Recently, optical trapping-Raman spectroscopy (OT-RS) has been developed ...and demonstrated for characterization of single, airborne particles. Such particles in different chemical groups have been characterized by OT-RS in recent years and many more are being studied. In this work, we collected single-particle Raman spectra measured using the OT-RS technique and began construction of a library of OT-RS fingerprints that may be used as a reference for potential detection and identification of aerosol particles in the atmosphere. We collected OT-RS fingerprints of aerosol particles from eight different categories including carbons, bioaerosols (pollens, fungi, vitamins, spores), dusts, biological warfare agent surrogates, etc. Among the eight categories, spectral fingerprints of six groups of aerosol particles have been published previously and two other groups are new. We also discussed challenges, limitations, and advantages of using single-particle optical trapping-Raman spectroscopy for aerosol-particle characterization, identification, and detection.
We integrated a rigid optical trap into a tunable pulsed cavity ringdown spectroscopy (OT-CRDS) system to characterize the extinction of single airborne particles in the UV spectral region (306-315 ...nm). Single solid particles from a multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT), Bermuda grass smut spore, carbon microsphere, and blackened polyethylene microsphere were trapped in air based on the photophoretic force. The improved OT-CRDS system was highly sensitive and able to resolve extinctions of single particles from different materials and sizes at a given wavelength. Further, we successfully manipulated the number of particles, e.g., 1, 2 or more particles, in the trap and measured their distinguishable extinctions using the OT-CRDS. We also show that the particle size and extinction have a good linear correlation from the measurements of 24 single MWCNT particles. Material- and wavelength-dependent extinctions of the four types of airborne particles were also characterized. Results reveal that single airborne particles regardless of their differences in material and size, due to their heterogeneous morphology, have individual-particle dependent extinctions and that dependence can be resolved and characterized using the OT-CRDS technique.
Photophoretic trapping-Raman spectroscopy (PTRS) is a new technique for measuring Raman spectra of particles that are held in air using photophoretic forces. It was initially demonstrated with Raman ...spectra of strongly-absorbing carbon nanoparticles (Pan et al. 44 (Opt Express 2012)). In the present paper we report the first demonstration of the use of PTRS to measure Raman spectra of absorbing and weakly-absorbing bioaerosol particles (pollens and spores). Raman spectra of three pollens and one smut spore in a size range of 6.2–41.8µm illuminated at 488nm are shown. Quality spectra were obtained in the Raman shift range of 1600–3400cm−1 in this exploratory study. Distinguishable Raman scattering signals with one or a few clear Raman peaks for all four aerosol particles were observed within the wavenumber region 2940–3030cm−1. Peaks in this region are consistent with previous reports of Raman peaks in the 1600–3400cm−1 range for pollens and spores excited at 514nm measured by a conventional Raman spectrometer. Noise in the spectra, the fluorescence background, and the weak Raman signals in most of the 1600–3400cm−1 region make some of the spectral features barely discernable or not discernable for these bioaerosols except the strong signal within 2940–3030cm−1. Up to five bands are identified in the three pollens and only two bands appear in the fungal spore, but this may be because the fungal spore is so much smaller than any of the pollens. The fungal spore signal relative to the air-nitrogen Raman band is approximately 10 times smaller than that ratio for the pollens. The five bands are tentatively assigned to the CH2 symmetric stretch at 2948cm−1, CH2 Fermi resonance stretch at 2970cm−1, CH3 symmetric stretch at 2990cm−1, CH3 out-of-plane end asymmetric stretch at 3010cm−1, and unsaturated =CH stretch at 3028cm−1. The two dominant bands of the up-to-five Raman bands in the 2940–3030cm−1 region have a consistent band spacing of 25cm−1 in all four aerosols. Finally we discuss improvements to the PTRS that should provide a system which can trap a higher fraction of particle types and obtain Raman spectra over a larger range (e.g., 200–3600cm−1) than those achieved here.
•Photophoretic trapping-Raman spectroscopy (PTRS).•Raman spectra of a single pollen/spore trapped in air.•PTRS spectra of three pollens and one fungal spore.•Up to five Raman bands in the Raman shift region of 2940–3030cm−1.
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