Recent measurements of carbon isotopes in carbon dioxide using near-infrared, diode-laser-based cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) are presented. The CRDS system achieved good precision, often better than 0.2 per thousand, for 4% CO2 concentrations, and also achieved 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe describe the application of cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) to the detection of trace levels of ethylene in ambient air in a cold storage room of a fruit packing facility over a several month period. We compare these results with those obtained using gas chromatography (GC), the current gold standard for trace ethylene measurements in post-harvest applications. The CRDS instrument provided real-time feedback to the facility, to optimize the types of fruit stored together, and the amount of room ventilation needed to maintain sub-10 ppb ethylene levels for kiwi fruit storage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigh fluences inside cavity ring-down spectroscopy optical resonators lend themselves to fluorescence or Raman spectroscopy. An instrument at 488 nm was developed to measure extinction, and fluorescence of aerosols. A detection limit of 6 x 10;-9 cm;-1Hz;-1/2 (0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe describe the use of liquid-phase continuous-wave cavity ring-down spectroscopy for the detection of an HPLC separation. This technique builds on earlier work by Snyder and Zare using pulsed laser sources and improves upon commercially available UV-visible detectors by a factor of up to 50. The system employs a compact doubled-diode single-mode continuous-wave laser operating at 488 nm and a previously described Brewster's-angle flow cell.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have constructed a cavity ring-down spectrometer employing a near-IR external cavity diode laser capable of measuring 13C/12C isotopic ratios in CO2 in human breath. The system, which has a demonstrated minimum detectable absorption loss of 3.2 x 10(-11) cm(-1) Hz(-1/2), determines the isotopic ratio of 13C16O16O/12C16O16O by measuring the intensities of rotationally resolved absorption features of each species.
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