Designing an optical gas chamber with stepped structure for non-dispersive infrared methane gas sensor

Compared to traditional semiconductor and electrochemistry gas sensors, the non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) gas detection technology presents notable advantages in terms of stability and selectivity. However, the high-performance NDIR gas sensor generally requires a long optical path, resulting in a large gas chamber. In this short communication, a simple and relatively small stepped optical gas chamber (45 mm × 20 mm × 30 mm) with long optical path (94.92 mm) is designed combining simulation method. Furthermore, the stepped optical gas chamber based on the simulation structure is fabricated by a computer number control technique, and used to fabricate a NDIR gas sensor. The results show that the NDIR gas sensor based on the stepped optical gas chamber can be successfully used for CH4 gas detection with a wide detection range and good repeatability. This work provides an optional reference for developing compact NDIR gas sensor.