Two-component gas sensing with MIR dual comb spectroscopy

A dual comb spectrometer is used as gas sensor for the parallel detection of nitrous oxide (N2O) and carbon monoxide (CO). These gases have overlapping absorption features in the mid-infrared (MIR) at a wavelength of 4.6 µm. With a spectra acquisition rate of 10 Hz, concentrations of 50 ppm N2O and 30 ppm CO are monitored with a relative precision of 6 × 10 − 3 6\times {10^{-3}} and 3 × 10 − 3 3\times {10^{-3}} respectively. The limit of detections are 91 ppb for N2O and 50 ppb for CO for an integration time of 25 s. The system exhibits a linear sensitivity from 2 ppm to 100 ppm with coefficients of determination of 0.99998 for N2O and 0.99996 for CO.