Abstract

Novel designs and fabrication of multi-wavelength mid-IR quantum cascade lasers [1,2] have triggered highly attractive progress in instrumental developments towards compactness and multispecies detection, addressing the demands for high-precision and selective measurements of a large variety of molecular species, as well as for compact, robust and field deployable gas analyzers. This work highlights our latest achievements in the field through various examples of instruments and their applications. Thereby, we also illustrate the importance of further developing the key elements of laser spectrometers, such as laser driving concept and electronics [3], multipass cell design [4] as well as optimized solutions for data acquisition [5]. It is only through the combination of all these components that the inherent advantage of probing the fundamental absorption features in the mid-IR using quantum cascade lasers can fully be exploited.

© 2017 IEEE