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The application of an innovative spectroscopic balancing technique to measure the isotope 18O/16O ratio in water vapor is reported. Quartz enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy has been employed as the absorption sensing technique. Two isotope absorption lines with the same quantum numbers, with very close lower energy levels, have been selected to limit the sensitivity to temperature variations and guarantee identical broadening as well as relaxation properties. The sensitivity in measuring the deviation from a standard sample δ18O is 1.4‰, in 200 sec of integration time.
©2012 Optical Society of America
1. Introduction
Isotopic composition measurements of a chemical species require determining deviation of the concentration ratio R of two related isotopes from the ratio in a reference sample Rst. The most common application where such measurements are required is isotopologue abundance quantification. These measurements provide information about the sample origin, can be used for process identification or as a tracer. This is especially important in atmospheric climate and ecosystem research, volcanic emission studies and medical diagnostics [1–9]. For isotopologue abundance quantification, the isotopic ratio is expressed in a δ-notation as a deviation from the reference ratio:
For isotopic characterization of samples, practically important values of δ range from ~0.1‰ to 1‰. Making such precise measurements is difficult due to the small variations in pressure, laser power and other external factors. The most common instrument for this type of measurements is a mass-spectrometer (MS). A MS provides the required precision and accuracy, but there are a number of shortcomings associated with this technology. Mass spectrometers are expensive, bulky and in general cannot be used in field applications. Moreover, a MS cannot discriminate between molecules or molecular fragments with identical masses. In addition, a MS is not compatible with condensable gases, such as water, due to instrumental limitations. Thus isotopic analysis of water requires sample pretreatment that can potentially affect the isotopic composition. Infrared molecular absorption spectroscopy is considered as a viable alternative to MS. Current optical instrumentation for determination of isotopic composition is based on precise measurements of the peak absorption or the integrated absorbance signals of lines corresponding to two isotopes with a subsequent numerical comparison [7–9]. Hence, a small difference between isotopic compositions of the analyzed sample and the reference sample is determined as a small difference between two large numbers (concentration ratios). Sources of errors of such an approach are: the temperature and pressure dependence of the absorption line strength; non-linearity of laser tuning; baseline distortions caused by spurious interference fringes and far wings of the irrelevant strong absorption lines; and isotopic fractionation in the sampling procedure. To address these issues, we have developed a novel spectroscopic technique, the modulation cancellation method (MOCAM) that relies on the physical cancellation of the measured sensor response if R = Rst [10–12]. In this case, the signal from the analyzed sample will be directly proportional to the deviation of the absorption line strength ratio from the reference ratio.
2. Experimental setup
For proof of concept of the use of MOCAM for isotopologue abundance quantification, we employed quartz enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) in a 2f wavelength modulation mode [13] as an absorption sensing technique and water vapor as a test analyte. There is a strong interest in water isotopic ratio measurement, since the stable isotopes of water are effective tracers to investigate the hydrological cycle, ecological processes or paleoclimatic archives. The natural abundance ratio of isotopic water is 99.756: 0.039: 0.205 for H216O, H217O and H218O [14]. For our investigation, we selected the H216O and H218O isotopologues, because in geochemistry, paleoclimatology and paleoceanography δ18O, defined as a measure of the ratio of stable isotopes 18O:16O, is commonly used as a measure of the temperature of precipitation as well as a measure of groundwater/mineral interactions and as indicator of processes that show isotopic fractionation, such as methanogenesis [15,16].
The simplified architecture of the MOCAM-based QEPAS setup is shown in Fig. 1 . A 3f technique with two 99:1 fiber beam couplers and two reference tubes, each equipped with a photo-detector, are employed to lock two diode lasers, DL1 and DL2, to absorption lines belonging to two different water isotopologues, i.e., H218O and H216O, as described in [13]; We used standard water vapor to fill the reference tubes. Therefore, we employed a 10 cm-long tube for H216O (99.756%) and a 50 cm-long one for H218O (0.205%). Line locking feedback loops are not shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 Schematic of the QEPAS-based MOCAM setup. QTF – quartz tuning fork; FC1, 2 – 50:50 optical fiber couplers; CEU-control electronics unit. f – synchronization signal from CEU.
Both lasers are modulated via a sinusoidal current dither at the same frequency. We select a frequency f ≈(fR+ fA)/4, where fR and fA are resonant frequencies of the two spectrophones, labeled as “Reference” (R) and “Analyzer” (A). The DL2 is mounted inside the control electronics unit (CEU) and driven by it. The CEU triggered the phase lock loop (PLL) function generator, which produces the modulation signal for DL1. The two laser beams were combined using 50:50 optical fiber couplers (FC1 OZ Optics model Fused-12-1300/1550-9/125-50/50-3A3A3A-1-0.5). Half of the optical power was used to monitor the lasers operation and check that the optical power fluctuations remain negligible for all the measurement time. Subsequently the optical emission was directed to a second 50:50 optical coupler (FC2), and the two final beams were focused into the reference and analyzer QEPAS cells. The modulation phase φ and amplitude Am are set in such a way that the QEPAS signals at 2f produced in the reference cell by the two lasers are opposite in phase and cancel each other. The detected signal UR from the reference sample is used as the error signal in a computer controlled feedback loop, which continuously adjusts modulation amplitude Am for DL1 to keep UR constant (ideally, zero).
MOCAM measurements do not require exact 50:50 power split at FC2. However, for ideal experimental conditions it is necessary that FC2 divides radiation of DL1 and DL2 between R and A channels identically. Unfortunately, the evanescent wave fiber coupler used in our experiments was wavelength selective and did not fully satisfy that requirement. The consequences of that will be described and discussed in the following sections.
3. Isotopic composition calculation
The signal produced by the reference cell under balanced conditions will be:
where σR is the QTF thermal noise in the reference channel and kR describes the responsivity of the spectrophone. P1,2 is the optical power of DL1,2. [H218O]R and [H216O]R are two water isotopologue concentrations in the reference cell, The following equation is derived from Eq. (2):where RR = [H218O]R/[H216O]R is the isotopologue concentration ratio in the reference cell.The signal from the absorption cell is:
where [H218O]A and [H216O]A are the two water isotopologues concentrations in the analyzer cell and RA = [H218O]A/[H216O]A is the related concentration ratio.Assuming that the QEPAS spectrophones are similar (kR≈kA = k and σR≈σA = σ) and considering a small variation of H216O concentration ([H216O]A≈[H216O]R = [H216O]), we obtain:
where UA1 = kP1[H216O] is the signal generated by the DL2 (resonant with H216O absorption line) when DL1 is inactive (for example, its modulation disabled). RR is known because the reference cell is filled with a calibrated sample. The 21/2 coefficient reflects the fact that the noise of the two spectrophones is uncorrelated and therefore adds up in quadrature. Thus the deviation of the sample isotopic composition from reference δ18O is expressed by the following equation:In case of a natural 18O abundance RR≈1/500, it can be seen that for perfect balancing and with small δ18O, errors in δ18O are primarily determined by a weak signal UA. In case of QEPAS, fluctuations of UA are determined by thermal noise of the QTF. The unbalanced signal UA1 is much stronger, and its instability is primarily determined by the laser power fluctuations. However, these fluctuations are transferred to δ18O as its relative error. In contrast, for the traditional approach of separate measurements of two absorption lines power fluctuations impact the absolute error. For example, if δ = 10‰ which must be known to a 0.1‰ precision (1% relative error), MOCAM requires 1% UA1 error, which means 1% laser power stability. Traditional approach requires 0.1‰ = 10−4 stability for the same conditions.
If balancing is not perfect (as is the case in our experiments), then Eq. (6) changes to
where Uoff is an unbalanced offset proportional to the laser power. This offset decreases the theoretical MOCAM sensitivity.4. Results and discussion
The temperature dependence of δ18O is proportional to the difference of ground-state energies ΔE of the selected isotope transitions [17]:
where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is the absolute temperature. Thus, the selection of absorption lines for a pair of isotopes require that the related lower energy levels are as close as possible, to limit the sensitivity of the measurement to temperature variations, and also that they have the same quantum numbers, so as to guarantee identical broadening and relaxation properties. The concentration ratio 16O/18O being ~500 in standard water, we must select H218O lines with high absorption strength. Based on these criteria we identified two absorption lines, positioned at 7340.209 cm−1 and 7319.879 cm−1, respectively for H216O and H218O. The wavenumber (WN), the line strength (LS), the low state energy (E2), the air broadening and self-broadening coefficients (HWHM per 1 atm) of the selected lines are reported in Table 1 [18]. Pressure broadening coefficients are identical, according to the HITRAN database. The two lines are ~20 cm−1 apart and do not overlap at the working pressure of 20 Torr (0.026 atm) of pure H2O vapor. At a room temperature of 296 K the temperature dependence of δ18O from Eq. (8) is Δδ/ΔT≈0.022 ‰/K.
Table 1. Main parameters of the selected isotopic absorption lines
The optical powers of DL1 and DL2 passing through the two spectrophones were 5.6 mW and 1 mW, respectively. We employed sealed QEPAS cells with a volume of ~1.3 cm3. Before each measurements we evacuated the two cells to remove any residual water. Next we filled the cells with water vapor samples, sealed them and performed the measurements at room temperature at a corresponding saturated vapor pressure of 20 Torr. The resonance frequencies for the two QTFs must be as close as possible, since the two lasers must be modulated at the same frequency and this frequency must fall within the resonance curves of both QTFs. Since the resonance curves of QTFs are very narrow (< 1 Hz) at 20 torr, spectrophones with a bare tuning fork, i.e. without micro-resonator (MR) tubes were used, since adding a MR to a QTF can result in a shift of several Hz of the QTF resonant frequency [19]. The resonance frequency of the reference spectrophone was 32.763,80 Hz, while that of the sample spectrophone was 32.763,17 Hz. The FWHM of the two resonance curves [20] was ~0.65 Hz, so that the two bandwidths overlapped. Therefore we chose to drive the lasers at half of the average resonant frequency of 32.763,48 Hz (f=16381.74 Hz), because the laser frequency crosses the absorption lines twice per cycle.
Initially, both R and A spectrophones contain the same reference water sample, and the signal from R was balanced out. However, it was observed that the signal measured from the lock-in amplifier from A was not zero for these conditions, because of the wavelength selectivity of FC2. The unbalance was ~12 µV corresponding of ~4% of the full DL1-induced signal. Therefore, we re-adjusted Am to set the signal in the A channel equal to zero. This procedure resulted in a non-zero UR signal, and a computer-controlled feedback loop was set to maintain this signal at constant level. In this way Eq. (6) remains valid, although sensitive to variations of laser power in the reference channel. Next we filled the A cell with calibrated water samples and compared the estimated δ18O with that obtained using Eq. (6), thus measuring UA1 by disabling the modulation of DL1 and UA with the modulation of both laser enabled. We used two different water samples, the first containing 99.9985% of H216O and 0.0015% H218O; the second sample was composed of 90% of H216O and 10% of H218O. Both samples were H217O depleted. In the first case we measured with a 1 sec integration time a value for δ18O = −896 ±4.8 ‰, while the expected one is −927 ‰. The ~3% difference between the two values is mainly due to the residual H218O, that is not completely removed by the evacuation procedure. For the second sample we obtained a good correlation between the expected and measured values for δ18O. We measured δ18O = 52900±260 ‰, with a relative deviation of 0.3% from the expected value of 53068 ‰. Besides random errors related to the laser power and balancing fluctuations, our result contains systematic error because of dilution of the isotopically enriched water vapor sample by residual moisture in the gas system.
To determine the best achievable detection sensitivity of the MOCAM-based QEPAS isotope concentration sensor we performed an Allan variance analysis [21], measuring and averaging sensor response under balanced conditions. The Allan plot is shown in Fig. 2 . For a 200s averaging time we achieved a minimum detection error of ~1.5 ‰ for δ18O.
The main sources of error result from laser power fluctuations. The feedback loop for balancing is based on a Labview control program with ~1 Hz bandwidth. The initial growth from 1 to 4s reflects delay and the related oscillations in the feedback loop when balancing the signal of the reference channel. The program will set a small limit window. When the error signal is outside of the limit window, the modulation voltage will be automatically adjusted by sending a command signal to the CEU to either increase or decrease the minimum step size of 0.01 V in order to adjust the error signal within the limit window and maintain the reference channel balanced. The resolution of the 0.01 V for modulation voltage and 1 Hz correction frequency limit the feedback loop performance. If a faster, continuous PID real-time control feedback loop is available instead of a digital correction method with a limited window setting, it will compensate the temporal variation of the laser power and further lower the noise level. Another source of error results from the non-optimal configuration since the signal in the R channel is not zero but exceeds the thermal noise of by a factor 2 (the thermal noise is 6.4µV) in a 0.785 Hz detection bandwidth, which is set by the internal CEU digital filters and is applicable when the data are read every 1 s without additional averaging.
The theoretically achievable sensitivity for isotopic measurements is determined from the SNR for the UA signal, since the error derived from UA1 measurements results negligible with respect to that determined by UA, being the UA1 signal much larger than UA. The technical limit of SNR/21/2 for the used control electronic unit (CEU) is ~104 Hz-1/2, corresponding to an error in δ = 0.1 ‰ for a 1 Hz bandwidth. Possible ways to improve the achievable sensitivity is to employ lasers capable of higher laser output power. Furthermore, due to not perfectly matching between the laser and the 99:1 fiber splitter, we lose half of the lasers power. Hence, by improving the laser-fiber coupling in our setup we can reach a 1 ‰ δ-value. An additional improvement can be obtained by using spectrophones employing QTFs equipped with MR. We previously demonstrated up to a factor of 30 improvement of the SNR with respect to spectrophones using bare tuning forks [19], however, great care has to be taken to match the resonance frequencies of the two R and A cells within the resonance curves of both QTFs.
Acknowledgments
The Rice University Laser Science Group acknowledges financial support from a National Science Foundation ERC MIRTHE award and a grant C-0586 from The Welch Foundation. V. Spagnolo acknowledges financial support from the Regione Puglia “Intervento Cod. DM01, Progetti di ricerca industriale connessi con la strategia realizzativa elaborata dal Distretto Tecnologico della Meccatronica” and the II Faculty of Engineering of the Politecnico di Bari.
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