This paper discusses the output characteristics of the sensor response of infrared ethanol gas detectors based on incident radiation intensity. Sensors placed at each focal point of two elliptical waveguides were fabricated to yield two module combinations and to verify the output characteristics. A thin Parylene-C film was deposited onto the reflector surfaces of one module. The thermal properties were compared between the sensor (2.0 Ø) and sensor with a hollow disk (1.6 Ø), the disk being mounted at the end of one detector. The fabricated sensor modules were placed inside a gas chamber. The temperature was increased from 253 K to 333 K, over the concentration range from 0 to 500 ppm. As the temperature increases by 10 K, the output of sensor (2.0 Ø) without and with Parylene-C coating typically increased by 70 mV and 52 mV, respectively. However, the sensor output with the hollow disk showed an average decrement of 0.8 mV/50 ppm and 1 mV/50 ppm for module without and with Parylene-C deposition, respectively. For concentrations higher than 50 ppm, the estimation error was around ±5%. Further, the sensitivity to temperature variation and the absorbance of infrared (IR) reflection was found higher for Parylene-C coated module.

This paper presents the NDIR CO₂ gas sensor that has improved the sensitivity and also the accuracy by the deposition of thin hydrophobic film (Parylene-C film with 0.5 micrometer thick) onto the reflector surfaces of White-cell structure. After deposition of hydrophobic thin film, the sensitivity of sensor has been increased with averaged 10% and the estimated errors were reduced within 13 ppm to 143 ppm from 254 K to 324 K temperature ranges and from 0 ppm to 5000 ppm CO₂ concentrations.

This paper presents the effects of infrared energies on dual elliptical nondispersive infrared (NDIR) ethanol gas sensors for preventing drunken drivers and the advantages of using dual ethanol detectors for temperature compensation algorithm. In order to achieve long-term reliability according to the aging of infrared source, two ethanol detectors are placed at the two foci of ellipsoids and the averaged voltage ratios of two ethanol detectors are used to establish the compensation methods.