An Intensity-Stabilized Diode-Laser Spectrometer for Sensitive Detection of NH3

This paper reports on a compact analyzer for ammonia monitoring in the air based on near-infrared wavelength-modulation diode-laser absorption spectroscopy. Particular attention is devoted to the problem of residual amplitude modulation (RAM), which is responsible for the occurrence of the line profiles´ distortions. The RAM effects are eliminated by means of an intensity-control feedback loop based on an acoustooptic modulator. This offers the advantage of simplifying enormously the spectral-analysis procedure, which, otherwise, would require a considerable amount of calculation if the RAM distortions were considered