Investigating the Potential of Thin Silicon Nitride Membranes in Fiber-Based Photoacoustic Sensing

The detection of methane, a strong greenhouse gas, has increased in importance due to rising emissions, which partly originate from unreported and undetected leaks in oil and gas fields. The gas emitted by these leaks could be detected using an optical fiber-based photoacoustic sensor called PAS-WRAP. Here, we investigate the potential of silicon-based membranes as more sensitive microphones in the PAS-WRAP concept. Toward this goal, we built a setup with which the frequency response of the membranes was interrogated by an optical fiber. Multiple mounting mechanisms were tested by adapting commercial interferometry systems (OP1550, ZonaSens, Optics11 B.V.) to our case. Finally, methane detection was attempted using a silicon nitride membrane as a sensor. Our findings show a quality factor of 2.4 at 46 kHz and 33.6 at 168 kHz for a thin silicon nitride membrane. This membrane had a frequency response with a signal-to-background ratio of 1 ± 0.7 at 44 kHz when tested in a vacuum chamber with 4% methane at 0.94 bar. The signal-to-background ratio was not significant for methane detection; however, we believe that the methods and experimental procedures that we used in this work can provide a useful reference for future research into gas trace detection with optical fiber-based photoacoustic spectroscopy.