Artificial nose : identification of volatile organic molecules with optofluidic photonic Bragg fibers

Abstract

Artificial nose system, comprising of a bundle of photonic Bragg fibers used for identification of industrial toxic gases is reported. The system, otherwise known as optoelectronic nose, harvests the unique infrared spectrum of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), in conjunction to a fabricated multilayered photonic Bragg fibers that filters the incident spectrum of the infrared to a narrow transmission band. The sensing mechanism of the device comprises the measurement of infrared absorption of volatile analytes inside the hollow cores of opto uidic Bragg fibers. An array of six fibers is used, where each fiber target a different region of the midinfrared in the range of 2-14 m with transmission bandwidths of about 1-3 m. The quenching in the transmission of each fiber due to the presence of analyte molecules in the hollow core is measured separately and the cross response of the array allows the identification of virtually any (VOC). The device was used for the identification of seven industrial VOC vapors with high selectivity using a standard blackbody source and an infrared detector. The array response is registered as a unique six digit binary code for each analyte by assigning a threshold value to the fiber transmissions. The developed prototype is a comprehensive and versatile artificial nose that is applicable to a wide range of analytes.