Determination of methanol concentration in ethanol in liquid phase by a phononic crystal Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Abstract A practical and portable ultrasonic interferometric sensor to detect methanol concentration in ethanol in the liquid phase is numerically investigated. For high-sensitivity operation, the sensor is designed as a Mach–Zehnder interferometer based on a linear-defect waveguide in a two-dimensional phononic crystal, which consists of square array of cylindrical steel rods in water. The waveguide core comprises polyethylene tubing, impedance-matched with water, filled with either pure ethanol or ethanol-methanol binary mixture, allowing fast replacement of the analyte. Band structure analyses through the finite-element method are carried out to obtain guiding modes at frequencies around 200 kHz. With 50 × 21 cells with 4.2 mm periodicity, the total sensor area is 210-by-88.2 millimeters, which can be significantly reduced by increasing the operating frequency to megahertz range. The interferometer is constructed via T junctions of the waveguide, which facilitates low-loss equal splitting and recollection of ultrasonic waves. Sample and reference wave paths are constructed by filling polyethylene tubing on the upper and lower halves of the interferometer with the ethanol-methanol mixture and pure ethanol, respectively. Frequency-domain finite-element method simulations reveal that the sensor output is characterized by several transmission peaks, one of which is centered at 203.35 kHz with a full-width at half-maximum of 20 Hz, resulting in a quality factor of 10167. The peak frequency of this peak redshifts at a rate of 7.24 Hz per percent volume fraction change in methanol. The peak shift is linear when the methanol volume fraction is below 10%. Besides, the interferometric sensor has a figure of merit around 0.35. The proposed ultrasonic sensor offers rapid detection of methanol content in ethanol with high sensitivity.