Swept SensorTM - A Novel Portable Battery-operated Gas Sensing Solution

Background For decades, FTIR spectroscopy has been the method of choice for detecting, identifying, and establishing the purity of chemical compounds based on their infrared absorption properties. The method typically employs a thermal radiation source emitting in the 2.5 to 25 μm spectral range (e.g., GlobarTM ). The light emitted by the source is split into two beams, one of them passing through a sample cell. The sample beam and reference beam are re-combined in a Michelson interferometer, where they create an interference signal. The interference signal is subjected to a Fourier transformation, which allows extracting the absorption spectrum of the sample. While being a widely used technology that cannot be missing in any modern analytical laboratory, FTIR spectroscopy has a number of limitations including cost, foot-print, and speed.