Hydrogen sensing by relaxation-modulated photoacoustic spectroscopy based on a piezoelectric ceramic tuning fork
*Correspondence to:
Yufei Ma, Zhengzhou Advanced Research Institute, Harbin Institute of Technology, Zhengzhou 450008, Henan, China; National Key Laboratory of Laser Spatial Information, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang, China.
E-mail: mayufei@hit.edu.cn
Light Manip Appl. 2026;1:202623. 10.70401/lma.2026.0022
Received: September 15, 2026Accepted: November 05, 2026Published: November 06, 2026
This manuscript is made available in its unedited form to allow early access to the
reported findings. Further editing will be completed before final publication. As
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Abstract
In this work, a piezoelectric ceramic tuning fork (PCTF)-based hydrogen-induced relaxation-modulated photoacoustic spectroscopy (HIRM-PAS) method is proposed for indirect H2 detection. C2H2 is employed as an infrared-active probe molecule, and H2 concentration is retrieved from the attenuation of the C2H2 photoacoustic response induced by H2-dependent collisional relaxation. A low-frequency PCTF is used as the photoacoustic transducer to construct a piezoelectric ceramic photoacoustic spectroscopy (PCPAS) system, converting the relaxation-modulated acoustic response into an electrical signal. At a fixed C2H2 concentration of 1.5%, the introduction of 6% H2 reduces the PCPAS signal from 20.93 to 18.91 μV, corresponding to an attenuation of 9.65%. In contrast, the simultaneously measured photodetector signal changes by only 0.061%, indicating that the optical absorption of C2H2 remains nearly unchanged and that the photoacoustic attenuation is mainly attributed to H2-induced modulation of the molecular relaxation process. The H2 response sensitivity is approximately 0.345 μV/%, with an estimated minimum detection limit of 0.182%. In addition, the system achieves a C2H2 minimum detection limit of 28.6 ppm. This work demonstrates the feasibility of converting H2-induced intermolecular relaxation into a measurable photoacoustic amplitude response, providing a new approach for indirect H2 sensing.
Keywords
Hydrogen sensing, photoacoustic spectroscopy, acetylene detection, piezoelectric ceramic tuning fork
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Liu B, Han G, Wang R, Sun H, Qiao S, He Y, et al. Hydrogen sensing by relaxation-modulated photoacoustic spectroscopy based on a piezoelectric ceramic tuning fork. Light Manip Appl. 2026;1:202623. https://doi.org/10.70401/lma.2026.0022
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Liu B, Han G, Wang R, Sun H, Qiao S, He Y, et al. Hydrogen sensing by relaxation-modulated photoacoustic spectroscopy based on a piezoelectric ceramic tuning fork. Light Manip Appl. 2026;1:202623. https://doi.org/10.70401/lma.2026.0022
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