- 1Empa, Air Pollution / Environmental Technologies, Duebendorf, Switzerland (bela.tuzson@empa.ch)
- 2Empa, Transport at Nanoscale Interfaces Laboratory, Duebendorf, Switzerland
Laser absorption spectroscopy is a widely adopted technique for high-precision trace-gas analysis across a broad range of applications. However, commercial instruments remain too bulky for deployment on flying platforms, such as UAVs or balloons. The key challenge thus remains reducing their size without compromosing their analytical performance.
In this study, we address this challenge and showcase our ongoing developments that have enabled the creation of highly compact mid-infrared trace-gase analyzers. Key innovations include: i) a rapid frequency sweep of the laser using an intermittent continuous wave (icw) driving scheme [1], which reduces the footprint and improves energy and heat management efficiency, ii) a fully monolithic segmented circular multipass cell design [2] that overcomes the size and weight limitations of traditional absorption cells, and iii) an FPGA-based data acquisition system capable of processing large volumes of data in real-time with bandwidths up to 250 MB/s [3].
By combining these groundbreaking developments, we have developed fully autonomous devices that excel in robustness, compactness, rigidity, and lightweight design. Their exceptional in-flight performance is demonstrated through selected field deployments on UAVs and balloons [3-5]. Ongoing developments include multi-species trace-gases detection to monitor ship emissions. This requires a fundamental reconception of the circular multipass cell to increase its optical path length by an order of magnitude.
The versatility and ruggedness of these lightweight and low-footprint spectrometers unlocks new opportunities for applications requiring high spatio-temporal resolution, such as urban or industrial site monitoring and upper atmosphere observation.
References:
[1] C. Liu et al., Rev. Sci. Instr. 89, 065107, 2018.
[2] M. Graf et al., Opt. Lett. 43, 2434-2437, 2018.
[3] B. Tuzson et al., Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13(9), 4715-4726, 2020.
[4] M. Graf et al., Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14(2), 1365-1378, 2021.
[5] Brunamonti et al., Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 4391–4407, 2023.
How to cite: Tuzson, B., Heilmann, L., Brunamonti, S., Scheidegger, P., Kupferschmid, A., Weitnauer, A., and Emmenegger, L.: Advances in lightweight laser-based analyzers for flying platforms, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-17118, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-17118, 2025.
