The development of a miniature, simple, inexpensive ir spectro photometer will find application in any situation where continuous air quality monitoring is desired. Opcoa proposes to apply hybrid, miceo-electro-optics to the various components of the various components of an ir spectrophotometer not only to reduce the size and power requirement of the system but also to enhance sensitivity and reliability. Using an electrically tunable fabry-perot filter instead of the conventional rotating grating or filter wheel, an optical fiber internal or evanescent propagating field instead of a sample chamber, and a semiconductor cooled ir detector instead of a pyroelectric detector will exploit recently developed technologies for the system development. The fiber optic, forming the absorption path can be wrapped about a solid-state-refrigerator cooled shaft allowing condensation (and hence detection) of aerosols and particulate matter on the fiber surface. The entire systems is controlled by and has its analysis (kalma fileter) performed by a microprocessor.
