We want you to have a successful grant application! Below are a series of FAQs about the value of Picarro analyzers to your scientific research. We find these questions often come up during funding submissions. We hope you will consider including this information in your grant application as it highlights how Picarro analyzers enable your science and what makes our technology stand apart from others. We also have a database of scientific literature that demonstrates how Picarro instruments have been deployed by scientists.

FAQs for Grant Applications

What is CRDS and how is it useful to my science?

Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy is a time-based measurement cavity-enhanced optical spectroscopy technique that allows you to quantify concentrations of greenhouse gases, trace gases and the stable isotopic composition of water, carbon and nitrogen compounds. We utilize the fact that every small gas-phase molecule has a unique infrared absorption profile that can be measured and quantified.  In particular, we use a time-based technique, Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CRDS), which can detect trace gases with part-per-billion, and sometimes even, part-per-trillion, sensitivity.  If you want to read more about our technology, please see our page on Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy.

Why should I ask for funding for a Picarro?

There are many reasons why a Picarro analyzer can help you gain insight into your research.  Here are a few that are specific to our CRDS technology:

• Ultra-high precision and low drift: Picarro instruments offer high data integrity due to their high quality design and optimization.  In particular, a Picarro analyzer gains high spectral precision because of our proprietary wavelength monitor that measures the absolute wavelength of measurement to a precision that is a few orders of magnitude narrower than the spectral linewidth, and our precise temperature and pressure control in the sample cavity. Precise temperature and pressure control is essential for low drift and means that you don’t have to calibrate your system as frequently as other absorption-based technologies.
• Time-based absorption measurement: Picarro analyzers utilizes a time-based measurement technique for determining concentrations of gases in a cavity rather than measuring absolute absorbance directly. This results in a more stable system because precise measurements of time are easier than precise direct measurements of absorbance, and because the technology is insensitive to fluctuations in laser intensity during the measurement.
• High sensitivity: Although the cavity in a Picarro analyzer is only approximately 35 cubic centimeters in volume, the configuration of the three mirrors results in a long effective pathlength that can be over 20 kilometers.  This long pathlength means that Picarro CRDS analyzers are one thousand to one million times more sensitive than other conventional infrared spectrometers.  This means you can detect trace gases at the part-per-billion, and even sometimes, the part-per-trillion level.
• Field deployable: We want you, not your instrument, to dictate where to conduct your science whether it be in the field, in the lab, on a boat or in a plane. Picarro engineers dedicated significant resources to ensure our analyzers are insensitive to ambient temperature changes, can withstand bumps and drops (all of our instruments pass military-grade drop and vibration tests), and can be moved easily by an individual.

What publications should I refer to for a demonstration of successful deployment in my application?

We’ve listed a number of publications below and sorted them by application.  If you don’t find your application here, please use our Peer Reviewed Publication page to search for publications in your field or contact us.

For Atmospheric Sciences, Air Quality and Emissions:

• Toward a better understanding and quantification of methane emissions from shale gas development
• An attempt at estimating Paris area CO₂ emissions from atmospheric concentration measurements
• A multitower measurement network estimate of California’s methane emissions
• Diurnal tracking of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions in the Los Angeles basin megacity during spring, 2010

For Hydrological Sciences & Ecohydrology:

• Stable Isotope Analysis of Precipitation Samples Obtained via Crowdsourcing Reveals the Spatiotemporal Evolution of Superstorm Sandy
• The nocturnal water cycle in an open-canopy forest
• Measuring Dissolved Organic Carbon δ¹³C in Freshwaters Using Total Organic Carbon Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (TOC-CRDS)

For Paleoclimate:

• Eemian interglacial reconstructed from a Greenland folded ice core
• Recent climate and ice-sheet changes in West Antarctica compared with the past 2,000 years
• Paleoclimate record in the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, Sinai Peninsula, Egypt

For Geochemistry:

• Precise and accurate δ¹³C analysis of rock samples using Flash Combustion-Cavity Ring Down Laser Spectroscopy
• Novel Use of Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy to Investigate Aquatic Carbon Cycling from Microbial and Ecosystem Scales
• Drilling and sampling a natural CO₂ reservoir: Implications for fluid flow and CO₂-fluid-rock reactions during CO₂ migration through the overburden

For Ecology and Soil Science:

• Evaluating the performance of commonly used gas analysers for methane eddy covariance flux measurements: the InGOS inter-comparison field experiment
• Probing carbon flux patterns through soil microbial metabolic networks using parallel position-specific tracer labeling
• Effect of temperature on metabolic activity of intact microbial communities: Evidence for altered metabolic pathway activity but not for increased maintenance respiration and reduced carbon use efficiency

For Picarro’s CRDS Technology:

• Demonstration of high-precision continuous measurements of water vapor isotopologues in laboratory and remote field deployments using wavelength-scanned cavity ring-down spectroscopy (WS-CRDS) technology
• Applications of cavity ring-down spectroscopy to high precision isotope ratio measurement of ¹³C/¹²C in carbon dioxide
• Accurate measurements of carbon monoxide in humid air using the cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) technique
• Calibrated high-precision ¹⁷O-excess measurements using cavity ring-down spectroscopy with laser-current-tuned cavity resonance

If you need information about specific analyzer or application, please Contact Us.