Optical parametric oscillator based detection of hydrogen cyanide for bio-medical applications

There is an increasing interest in the development of sensitive and selective methods to detect hydrogen cyanide (HCN) from biological samples [1,2]. Several studies have been conducted with different types of matrices, such as water, soil, air, exhaled breath and food. Different methods have been used to monitor HCN; however, most of them are complex and involve a large amount of manipulations of samples or the use of solvents. Additionally, they feature slow response time (in the order of minutes) and therefore hardly any continuous gas monitoring over days or weeks can be performed. In most cases the reported detection limit is in the part-per-million volume (ppmv) mixing range, which is not sufficient to perform trace emission experiments on small amounts of biological samples. Thus, the development of more sensitive methods able of measuring ppbv (parts-per-billion volume) level of HCN, becomes very motivated.