Modular IR Detector Platform for Enhanced NDIR Gas Sensing Performance

NDIR gas sensors are well established in a variety of applications and have been traditionally associated with the lower end of the optical gas sensor market. There are however expectations on part of the end users to steadily improve the parameters of the devices – namely decrease the limit of detection of said gas, reduce the power consumption or response time, and improve reliability.

One of the key areas where vast improvements are possible is infrared detectors. The most commonly used detector type in NDIR are thermal detectors like pyroelectrics, offering reasonable performance, but due to their operating principle, physically limited in parameters like detectivity and time constants. A promising alternative are RoHS-compliant III-V based semiconductor detectors. This talk will provide an overview over market situation of detectors versus the requirements for NDIR sensors, as well as introduce a modular semiconductor IR detector platform devised for easy replacement of thermal detectors in NDIR systems.

About the presenter
Jedrzej Mijas is an application engineering team leader, at VIGO Photonics, who specializes in spectroscopy and gas sensing applications. During his studies at the University of Warsaw, where he earned a Master of Science degree, he gained broad theoretical knowledge and practical experience in IR optics. His expertise gained in academia was confirmed by his construction of a TDLAS system for trace ethane detection in human breath for his master's thesis.