SF6 has been recognized worldwide as the main insulating gas for Gas‐Insulated Switchgear (GIS). It is often required to accurately and effectively detect typical SF6 decomposition. In this paper, a sub‐ppm‐level SO2F2 and SOF2 gas sensor based on photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) is proposed and demonstrated. The steel resonant photoacoustic cell with a resonant frequency of 1750 Hz was designed and fabricated. The harmonic detection technique in wavelength modulation spectroscopy was applied to improve the signal‐to‐noise ratio. A mercury‐cadmium‐telluride photodetector was added in the PAS system to monitor the input optical power, in order to compensate for the errors caused by power fluctuations. SO2F2 and SOF2 were measured by using distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers at 6648 and 7463 nm, respectively. The results show that the proposed sensor performed with favourable linearity within the dynamic range, and reached the minimum detection limit of 0.22 ppm for SO2F2 and 0.28 ppm for SOF2, which indicated its great potential for monitoring the decomposition process of SF6 in GIS.

SO2F2 and SOF2 are the main components from the decomposition of insulation gas SF6. Photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) has been acknowledged as an accurate sensing technique. Polar material adsorption for SO2F2 and SOF2 in the photoacoustic gas cell of PAS may affect detection efficiency. In this paper, the optical gas-cell dynamic adsorptions of four different materials and the detection effects on SO2F2 and SOF2 are theoretically analyzed and experimentally demonstrated. The materials, including grade 304 stainless steel (SUS304), grade 6061 aluminum alloy (Al6061), polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDC), and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), were applied inside the optical gas cell. The results show that, compared with metallic SUS304 and Al6061, plastic PVDC and PTFE would reduce the gas adsorption of SO2F2 and SOF2 by 10 to 20% and shorten the response time during gas exchange. The complete gas defusing period in the experiment was about 30 s. The maximum variations of the 90% rising time between the different adsorption materials were approximately 3 s for SO2F2 and 6 s for SOF2, while the generated photoacoustic magnitudes were identical. This paper explored the material selection for PAS-based gas sensing in practical applications.