• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.36-41
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• 2021

The motivation of this paper is to easily analyze the properties of nondispersive infrared gas sensor that has more than two different optical path length and to suggest the criterion and definition of infrared light absorbance in order to minimize the measurement errors. With the output voltage ratios and the normalized derivatives of infrared ray (IR) absorbance, when the normalized derivatives of IR absorbance decreases from 0.28 to 0.10, the lower and higher limits of errors were decreased from -5.62% and 2.39% to -4.27% and 2.78%. When the normalized derivatives of IR absorbance were 0.10, the output voltage could be partitioned into two regions with one exponential equation and the temperature compensation error was less than 5%.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.303-311
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• 2020

Nondispersive infrared CO₂ gas sensor was developed after the simulation of optical cavity structure and assembling the optical components: IR source, concave reflectors, Fresnel lens, a hollow disk, and IR detectors. By placing a hollow disk in front of reference IR detector, the output voltages are almost constant value, near to 70.2 mV. The absorbance of IR light, F_a, shows the second order of polynomial according to ambient temperatures at 1,500 ppm. The differential output voltages and the absorbance of IR light give a higher accuracy in estimations of CO₂ concentrations with less than ± 1.5 % errors. After implementing the parameters that are dependent upon the ambient temperatures in microcontroller unit (MCU), the measured CO₂ concentrations show high accuracies (less than ± 1.0 %) from 281 K to 308 K and the time constant of developed sensor is about 58 sec at 301 K. Even though the estimation errors are relatively high at low concentration, the developed sensor is competitive to the commercial product with a high accuracy and the stability.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.51-55
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• 2011

This paper describes the temperature compensation algorithm using thermopile detector for nondispersive infrared methane gas sensor. From the output voltage of thermistor that is attached onto the infrared detector, the ambient temperature was extracted. The effects of temperatures on the properties of sensor module (the characteristics of narrow bandpass filter, optical cavity and infrared lamp, and gas absorption coefficient times optical path length) have been introduced in order to implement the temperature compensation algorithm. Even though the measurement error of developed sensor module was in the range of $\pm$ 1,500 ppm, after programming the temperature compensation algorithm, the developed sensor module shows a high accuracy less than +180 ppm error within $20^{\circ}C$ temperature variation.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.168-172
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• 2017

A nondispersive infrared (NDIR) ethanol gas sensor was prototyped with ASIC implemented thermopile sensor, which included a temperature sensor and two ellipsoidal waveguide structures. The temperature dependency of the two ethanol sensors (with partially blocked and intact structures) has been characterized. The two ethanol gas sensors showed linear output voltages initially when varying the ambient temperature from 253 K to 333 K. The slope of the temperature sensor presented a constant value of 15 mV/K. After temperature compensation, the ethanol gas sensor estimated ethanol concentrations with larger errors of 20 to 25% below 200 ppm. However, the estimation errors were reduced to between -10 and +1 % from 253 K to 333 K above 200 ppm ethanol gas concentration in this research.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.232-237
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• 2005

In this paper, we fabricated $CO_2$ gas sensor based on the MEMS infrared sensor and characterized its electrical and $CO_2$-sensing properties. The fabricated $CO_2$ gas sensor by MEMS technique has many advanges over NDIR(nondispersive) $CO_2$ sensor such as monolithic fabrication, very high selectivity on $CO_2$, low power consumption and compact system. Microbolometer by surface micromachining was fabricated for gas detector and $CO_2$ filter chip by bulk micromachining was fabricated for signal referencing. By using the proposed and fabricated gas sensor, we are expected to measure $CO_2$ concentration more accurately with high reliability.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.179-185
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• 2017

This article describes the characteristics of nondispersive infrared carbon dioxide gas sensor according to the temperatures and humidifies. In this researches, a thermopile sensor that included application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) was used and the White-cell structure was implemented as an optical waveguide. The developed sensor modules were installed in gas chamber and then the temperature of gas chamber has been increased from 283 K to 313 K with 10K temperature step. In order to analyze the effects of humidity levels, the relative humidity levels were changed from 30 to 80%R.H. with small humidifier. Then, the characteristics of sensor modules were acquired with the increment of carbon dioxide concentrations from 0 to 2,000 ppm. When the initial voltages of sensors were compared before and after humidifying the chamber at constant temperature, the decrements of the output voltages of sensors are like these: 9mV (reference infrared sensor), 41 mV (carbon dioxide sensor), 2 mV (temperature sensor). With the increment of ambient temperature, the averaged output voltage of carbon dioxide sensor was increased 19 mV, however, when the humidity level was increased, it was decreased 14mV. Based upon the experimental results, the humidity effect could be alleviated by the increment of temperature, so the effects of humidity and temperature could be only compensated by the ambient temperature itself. The estimated carbon dioxide concentrations showed 10% large errors below 200 ppm, however, the errors of the estimations of carbon dioxide concentrations were less than ${\pm}5%$ from 400 to 2,000 ppm.